blog

Freelancing – the first two months

Freelance - noun. A mercenary warrior not sworn to any lord. This will be brief. In my first two months since quitting my day job and working full time as a freelance writer, I have written 53,482 words spread out over 120 articles for four publishers. My desire to...

A new chapter

It's eighty-nine degrees in my house as I write this, so apologies for any typos. Yesterday was my last day at Pro Photo Supply, my employer for the past six years. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunities I had there to grow as a writer, which I am still a...

Shooting live music with the Nikon D5

Sometimes, my job is pretty kool. A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking out Nikon's new flagship DSLR, the D5, to photograph local rock band Kool Stuff Katie in concert at one of Portland's oldest, most beloved bars: Kelly's Olympian. KSK is made up...

Nikon D5 concert photography

Snow day 2016

Yesterday, it snowed in Portland. These pictures aren't fantastic, but I feel like I should share them, anyway. Because it snowed. In Portland. And we have to celebrate. Daven Mathies / Blog Editorial style portrait photography in the Columbia River...

In search of snow

This morning, I woke up to a thin yet mesmerizing blanket of fresh snow. In Portland, this happens maybe once per year, but the timing of this year's dusting made me laugh. Yesterday afternoon, I went out shooting with the Parr Twins, Abbie and Kelsey, to test out...

The road to an MBA

Note: I originally wrote this on 10/29/2014 for Pacific University's MBA blog. The blog, it seems, never came to be. Now that I have completed the program, I've decided to share that original post here. - - - The past 12 months have been full of transitions for me....

High school bomb threats

I took a physics class my senior year of high school. One day, we were assigned an in-class project to make radios by wrapping copper wire around cardboard paper towel tubes. (And I think there was a magnet in there somewhere. All science things have magnets,...