20 on Tuesday: Breeze Floyd

I just got back from a weekend in Dallas where I attended the BLOOM Face 2 Face Workshop. We spent three days shooting models in the warmth of the Texas sun and in a beautiful natural light studio.  I have cards full of images waiting to be edited and I’ll share them in the next few days.  But the best part of the weekend was getting to meet in-person my fellow Bloom Forum photographers.  Brenda Acuncius and Kristy Lane were wonderful hosts and beautiful people who generously shared  their experience and wisdom with us.  I was also thrilled to finally meet Stephanie Moore, Jules Trandem, Maureen Wilson, Jasmine Sargent, Gretchen Davis, and Sara Tegman,  and to see my sweet friend Gail Pomare again, all of whom have been featured guests on my blog

But the person who most surprised and intrigued me when I met her was Breeze Floyd.

Breeze and I go back a little ways.  At the beginning of 2010  I did my best to design a quick and dirty Blogger blog to house my 365 Project (which met its demise halfway through the year, btw).  Breeze and I knew each other from a forum we frequented back then and I knew she was also starting her 365 project.  As I was designing this Blogger blog I got an email from Breeze who told me that I might want to change my blah blah blah blah (Wendy-ese for html language at the time) because she couldn’t leave any comments.  I was seriously like, “You might as well be speaking Swahili because I have no idea how to do that.” So she generously sent me detailed instructions, HTML-coding-to-change-your-blah-blah-blah-blah-For-Dummies, so I could fix my little blog.  We volleyed emails back and forth until my comment section was perfected.  I was SO grateful to her, and her generosity always stuck in my head.

She and I both eventually ended up at the BLOOM Forum and I knew she was planning on attending the F2F Workshop.  I was anxious to finally meet her but I also had a few preconceived ideas about what I expected her to be like.  She herself claimed to be extremely shy and sort of EMO.  I also knew she sported quite a few tattoos and I didn’t really know anyone IRL like that.  So I expected her to be this brooding, quiet, sort of sad person who wore a lot of black, who sat in the corner listening to depressing music on her ipod all day.  I know.  I’m sheltered.

Imagine how surprised I was when she ended up being one of the most talkative, happy, sweet, generous, and funny people there!  Yes, she had her iphone with her the entire time and yes, she listened to her music while she drove us around in her pimped out rental minivan, and yes, she has the most tattoos of anyone I know and probably will ever know.  But she told me the story behind each tattoo and she didn’t wear black and she used her iphone mostly to text people and I found out she is on the PTO at her kids’ school and she is the tiniest, sweetest EMO chick I know.

But best of all, she shared some of the images she had recently taken and we were all blown away!  On The Bloom Forum she is known for her mad computer skillz, being that she has an insanely successful business designing and building websites.  She very rarely shares her images on the forum so some of the girls didn’t even know she’s also a photographer.  She has an amazing knack for capturing the essence of a person through her lens.  Her love for her three children is evident  in her personal images.  Many of her clients choose her because of those images.  With minimal editing, her images are crisp and clean and beautiful!

I’m thrilled to introduce you to Breeze Floyd.

Hi Breeze!

Where are you from?

I asked him and he thought I was asking him to help me figure out the words I would use to describe myself and said, “quiet, small, agoraphobic” when I told him what I meant he said, “cool, nice, smart”

This is a hard one, I don’t really watch movies. When I was 5 or 6 I watched “Annie” over and over, does that count? How about three bands I could not live without?  Brand New, Taking Back Sunday and anything by Craig Owens.