I’ve been doing alot of freelance work lately, and something that I’ve been battling for a long time is the idea of the monetization of art. In the early years, it used to drive me crazy actually, but I seemed to have found a sense of balance. That’s not to say, of course, that there aren’t some definite caveats. These days, long hours into the night are spent doing freelance projects instead of songwriting and making beats like I used to. I’m finding now though, that it’s worth the loss of some income to make some time for myself to be creative for the sake of creativity; art for the sake of art. Instead of monetary compensation, I get the satisfaction of producing a piece of art that’s as good or bad as I want it to be. This is one of a line of projects that I’ve assigned myself to do to stay creative and inspired.

I hadn’t known the Bachrans super well while attending church with them, but I’d served alongside them a number of times, and ran into Daniel more than once at the Mac Store. When I found out that Kelly was an American Idol hopeful that went on to Hollywood week, I jumped at the chance to shoot a quick video with them. I had seen that they were recording some cover songs in their house, so I offered to come and shoot something with my own gear in their home setting. This was the result. While I need to work on a better way to stabilize my camera during shooting, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, and my reward ultimately, was the experience of shooting and producing it. I need to remind myself of that more.