Birth of a Studio

A CHAIN OF COINCIDENCES

Fast forward to 2018, January to be specific, when I won my first Bronze Award for an image I submitted to The Portrait Master Awards & Accreditation. It was also the first time I had submitted anything to be judged. That year I went on to obtain 42 more Bronze Awards, and it wasn't long before my father started to encourage me to sell the business I was doing and move on. At that time I was operating a Colocation Data Center (the business was rental based, offering space, power and bandwidth to Internet based companies). I had been doing that type of business for a number of years, going back 2001, so it wasn't easy to just change directions. Anyway, I thought about it, and days turned to weeks...and weeks turned to months...and then in 2020, the unthinkable happened...my father passed in May 2020. I was devastated, I thought I was handling it, but I was pretty lost. I threw myself into to photography and submissions to the The Portrait Master Awards, and during the next year or two, I managed to accumulate 125 Bronze (and Bronze with Distinction) Awards. Then with the May 2022 submission deadline approaching something told me I needed some new props.

On May 10th I hopped into my truck and started driving out to pick them up. It was a typical Spring morning, wet and rainy, and as I was driving and thinking about opening a rental studio, I looked upwards and said "Dad, I don't know what to do, am I doing the right thing? I wish you could send me a sign!!". As I continued on my drive, a song came on the radio and a couple of the lines in the lyrics really "spoke" to me. I was thinking about my Dad, and I heard the line - "If I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by? 'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles if I could just see you tonight". At that point I realized the skies had cleared up and it was now sunny, so I thought to myself...I wish I knew the title of this song. I glanced at my radio and realized the radio was connected my phone and it was Spotify that was playing. So I thought awesome, I can heart the song and come back to it...to my amazement, the song was ALREADY hearted!!! After shaking off the goosebumps I continued on my to pick up the props. Later that day I mentioned the freaky coincidence to my daughter, to which she asked if I had run across double digits lately. For me it was 22, so my daughter said I should google - "angel number 22", and whilst there are various interpretations, the one that hit me was - "...a sign from your angels that they are with you..."

Later that evening I received a call from the real estate agent whom I had listed my commercial property with, he said he stumbled across a unit that might be interesting to me, but I had to go see it at 10:00am because the owners were thinking of pulling it off the market and hanging on to it. The next morning I got in the truck, and the first song on the radio was "Calling All Angels"....the props I had picked up the day before were Angel Wings....I have only one tattoo, and you guessed it, it's an Angel. And to top it off, I found out about month later, that I won my first Silver Award...