I would like to share with you how the new healthcare law has personally helped someone very close to me: my sister. She graduated from college a while back and with no luck finding a full-time job, she got a job at Chick-fil-a to pay the bills. She enjoys it, but has to be extremely frugal with her budget. She went without health insurance for a few months until my parents realized that because she is younger than 26, she could get back on their plan because of the healthcare law. She finally got health insurance again on January 1st, only 20 days ago. She had been feeling sick the last few weeks and even went to the doctor once, but she knew something was wrong when she woke up in the middle of the night with horrible pain in one of her ears. She went back to the doctor who immediately sent her to an ear specialist. She has bullous myringitis, a severe bacterial infection, and they had to do a series of severely painful drainages to blisters that had formed on her eardrum. It also spread to the other ear, and the doctor said she had never seen a case that bad in her 8 years. The doctor said that if she hadn’t come when she did, she would have been in the hospital within hours. Aside from bronchitis and the terrible ear infections, she may have pneumonia as well. She is now on 5 separate medications to recover from everything.
She was able to get back on my parents’ insurance just in time. With no significant savings, the medical roadblocks she would have hit (financially and personally) would have been devastating. I can’t begin to imagine the long-term debt and difficulty she would have incurred. I am not advocating the law in its entirety, there are parts of it I agree with and disagree with. This is not a political post. However, a situation like this puts into perspective the importance of having health insurance. It breaks my heart that parents cannot take their kids to the doctor because it would destroy their family financially. If my sister were one of those kids, she would most certainly have serious permanent problems.
With all the politicizing of the healthcare law’s benefits and downfalls, it’s easy to forget the whole reason the problem was finally addressed. Please remember that it’s not all about politics, it’s about helping people that need help.
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I spearheaded a few creative changes to the magazine this year, including a brand new logo. Logos (especially magazine logos) shouldn’t be changed too often because of the risk of losing brand recognition, but it was time for something that represented us more accurately. We wanted to push the local aspect of our magazine: the fact that it is all about Charleston. Home + Design is secondary in importance to the fact that it is a local magazine with local homeowners in mind. Our goal was to keep the same standard of quality for upscale discriminating interest, but freshen the design a bit and make the magazine more fun to pick up and read. A magazine in my industry shouldn’t be cold and uninviting, but many are these days. We implemented a lot of subtle design changes inside the magazine as well, including the grid, color scheme, font styles, and layout. We are proud of the result and very pleased with all the feedback so far from clients, professionals, and the public.
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2010 was a great year for me for architectural photography. There wasn’t as much freelance work since people don’t have a lot of extra money to spend right now. But the magazine kept me really busy with some great shoots at fantastic homes. I’m still learning a lot and discovering new and different ways to produce higher impact shots.
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Here are some more fun pictures from Kim & Justin’s wedding in Charlotte.
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Rita and I are lucky enough to have found an affordable place to rent just blocks from the water in the Old Village area of Mount Pleasant, SC. I’m not sure why it’s called Mount Pleasant since it probably doesn’t get much higher than 8 feet above sea level, but that’s irrelevant. Rita and I like to take walks down the old roads and soak in the beauty and history. The homes age like wine; people take good care of them. In the fall, the weather is so perfect that you can wear a coat and pants or even shorts and a t-shirt and always be comfortable. The wind blows enough to rustle the trees and whisk in the salt air, but it’s not as strong as on the beach. It really is a wonderful place to walk and ride bikes. I feel like we’ve taken advantage of our good fortune and blessings to be part of such a beautiful place. At the end of each block, the road ends between houses just feet from the water in the bay. You can see the downtown peninsula, the Cooper River Bridge, and even Sullivan’s Island. The sun sets over the water at the end of each road, creating a pink and orange sky over the harbor. That’s the best time to go out there and sit. The only sounds are usually the wind, a dog or two somewhere, and a distant boat motor. It’s a nice escape from the pressures of life.
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I am so used to shooting in Charleston and always trying to find new creative places to take couples for engagement pictures. So it was nice to be able to meet up with Paige & Carson in Charlotte to explore and shoot. I love finding random places to get great shots in cities I am not very familiar with. I can’t wait to shoot their wedding in April!
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