I’ve been interested in photography for nearly ten years but only since November 2008 have I been actively pursuing the craft and pushing myself to learn as much as possible. I started reading and watching videos on Pro Photo Life.com then later found Strobist.com and started learning all about off-camera flash.
In my quest to learn the techniques taught on the Strobist blog I started taking many self portraits! In order to make learning easier I wrote a piece of software I named ShutterVoice which allowed me to control my camera through my voice. 
Some of the forums started buzzing while I recruited people to beta test the software and it got attention from Rob Galbraith, Lighting Mods, Wired.com, and CNet’s Crave. I don’t use ShutterVoice nearly as much anymore, in fact I can’t remember the last time I used it, but it served it’s purpose of letting me spend countless hours in front of my camera while I tested and learned lighting.
In February 2009 I went to the 1st Nebraska Strobist meet and met many local photographers, several of whom have become good friends. Afterward several photographers, myself included, contacted Don Giannatti from Lighting-Essentials and convinced him to bring his Learn to Light workshop to Omaha. June was scheduled for the workshop and I started getting various books and videos in order to make sure I was up to speed as much as possible for his workshop.
In April I hosted the 2nd Nebraska Strobist meet with Chris Tierney. I wrote up a half-dozen assignments and along with several appointed workshop leaders taught the members of the group about the theories surrounding off-camera lighting. At this point I had a very good technical understanding but was still working on how to appropriately use the tools I had at my disposal.
In June I attended Don’s workshop hosted at Jeff Pope’s Iconic Pictures studio in downtown Omaha, NE. 
There were six photographers at the workshop and a handful of models. Don shared his wealth of knowledge with us and guided us in creating and setting up lighting to create photographs to show a proof of concept. Something that struck a chord with me at this workshop was the idea of Subject Centric Lighting. Creating a lighting setup based on the subject at hand was something new to me. In the past I had decided on what lighting setup I wanted to try then found a subject that fit it. Another one of Don’s teaching that hit home with me was the idea of pre-visualization. Normally I set out to create a photograph with little idea of what I actually intend to create and instead would just wing it. In the past I have created a few pre-visualized photographs, most notably the several self-portraits in this article, but they have been far and in-between.
Please check back regularly as I have a lot in store for this blog!