During the early nervous moments of the pandemic in 2020, I decided to take an in-house photography director role to avoid work uncertainty. Then, at the start of 2022, I jumped to a content director position at an agency to round out my work experiences. I had spent years working with agencies as a freelancer, so I was curious about the other side. I knew I would want to return to freelancing, but I wasn’t sure about the timing. At the end of 2022, the agency I joined had several rounds of layoffs, and eventually, my time on the chopping block arrived. I want to say the path was instantly apparent, but it wasn’t. Instead of picking a path, I did both. I interviewed for roles at various places and started picking up freelance work. Each moment of job-hunting exasperation ended up being a tick in the pro column for freelancing. In February of this year, I finally decided to return to the freelance photography life full-heartedly. As I start to sort through my images for the year to put together a post of my favorites, I’m surprised by how nice this year of work has been.
Anyway, I’ve been:
Putting together lists of fun food gifts, and I’ve got these adorable daikon kitchen scissors, a cute olive pillow, this Taiwanese gift box and some fun food shirts and sweaters inspired by Maggie Hennesy’s article on why we love food-themed clothing.
Buying myself photography gifts like Fan Ho’s photobook of Hong Kong, Fred Herzog’s book of color photographs and a copy of The Concerned Photographer 2 in the hopes of some Hiroshi Hamaya documentary photos.
Hunting for more long reads and bookmarking longreads, tewt, next draft and the longform reddit for recommendations for the long wintery nights.
Working on a piece on Indian sweets (photo above is from this project), an opening in Wicker Park and a new Italian spot in River North. Work has been a joy this year, and I’ll take it.
Feeling sort of relieved to realize that my exasperation with social media and the internet seems to be shared by just about everyone.
Delighted to discover that Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame is still out there exploring the world and seemingly having a great time.
Diversions is a newsletter I’ve been writing on and off since 2014 with random thoughts I’ve been stewing on and links I’ve been sharing. These days you can find diversions on substack.
Till next time,
Sandy Noto