I guess I'm just a masochist.

Every convention that I go to, I end up tired, overwhelmed, and physically ill. Yet I still go. This year I went up to Baltimore to not attend Otakon. I instead stayed and the hotel with my girlfriend and her roommates on Thursday and Friday. And still got sick.

The reason that I didn't attend the con itself is because my brother and I had been hired to do the photography for a wedding on Saturday. Now that I've completed that, I've learned a number of important lessons, which I will share now.

1) I will never take photographs at another wedding unless it is family. Even then, not as the Wedding Photographer. It is the single most overwhelming event to photograph because everyone makes a giant deal over the entire thing and wants to get every conceivable picture done, just in case they ever forget that there was a wedding. Other events that could be photographed aren't such an issue of pictures. Nobody ever attends a funeral and insists on having pictures taken of the widow with the corpse. Okay, now let's get the grandchildren in there. Can we get a picture of the broken spine that did him in? Have you ever seen the list of Must Have Wedding Pictures? Brides shoes peeking out from under her dress. Bride looking out a window. Bride descending stairs. Bride putting on necklace. Tell you what, if you want a frame of every single moment, you get a video camera, that way you can get the other important shots, such as Bride making out with Best Man. Lecherus uncle pinching maid of honor's butt. Groom passed out drunk. Those are the scenes you will cherish.

2) Wedding photographers charge insane piles of money because they have to. Not only because of what I said in the previous bit, but because that check is the only thing that stops them from walking out.

3) My brother takes much better pictures of people than I do. I won't deny it. Right now, having to sort through our collective 2700+ images, I have no choice but to see it. This is because not only is he really good at it, but I'm just not. I think it may be in part because I don't like to look at people, and I have a hard time with faces.

4) I would have been much happier attending Otakon. I would have been at least as overwhelmed, exhausted, and sick, but I would have still managed to enjoy myself. I liked everyone in the hotel room this year, and I would like the idea of having the same crew again next year. And besides, if I'm going to be in that much pain, I would prefer to do it to myself with people that I feel comfortable around.

5) I think I'm getting a much better idea as time goes on of what is wrong with me. Now I just need to see if I can fix it with a bare minimum of pharmaceutical intervention.

6) It's time that I went and did the photography that I can do, and not keep trying the stuff I can't. Back to the inanimate, the tiny, and the natural.