Alright… I’ve been guilty of leaving my blog completely stale and lacking any new content for LONG ENOUGH!

This is a quick update to let you know a few things…
Firstly, I’m working on a new site/blog layout that will incorporate more of what I do, not just travel. I will have a Current Projects page where you can see all the different things I have my hands in, it will also have an Ask Austin section where I’ll be fielding any of your questions whether it be about photo/video/travel/Macs… whatever!

Here’s a quick update on some of my recent projects:

1) wwww.freethemm.com
FreeThemm is a project my cousin Brandon and I have been working on in effort to share the story of two girls who have been put in prison for their faith in Iran. I could talk about this forever but you can find out how you can help and more about them at www.freethemm.com.

2) www.youplusmedia.com
You + Media is a local media company in Dallas that is launching a new media-driven website targeted specifically to the Dallas market. Imagine it is a (local) fusion of Facebook and YouTube. They want highly-stylized, informative videos of places and people around Dallas. I’ve been working on a number of different projects with them… whether is be restaurant profiles or Victor Tango’s or a short piece telling the story of people that work from 12AM to 6AM around the metroplex.

3) GULP
Gulp is a concept I’ve had since highschool and now I’m finally feeling it’s the right time to start it up. For now, all I’m going to say is that (I feel) like it’s a very innovative and very promising retail startup. Brandon and I are working on building a team to make it happen. We’ve got two architects fleshing out ideas of what Gulp could look like. Way more to come on this in the near future.

4) GiveFoto
GiveFoto is a project that I’ve had the great opportunity to be involved in. We’ve got a bunch of fotogs together in the Dallas area and on November 14th we are going to be setting up 8-10 photo stations (each with white seamless backdrops/lights/etc) at a church in south Dallas. We’re encouraging anyone and everyone to come in and get photos of themselves, their kids, their pets…whatever they want. I’m excited to see how this impacts everyone involved… we are expecting to have over 700 people there! More to come on this soon…

Those are some of the more long term projects I’ve been working on. I just returned from NYC last week and had an incredible time hanging’ with some insanely talented people… Jeremy Cowart, Vincent Laforet, Joey Lawrence to name a few. I met a ton of great people and pulled some great inspiration for new projects from my time there. I also found out that an image that I entered in NatGeo Traveler/PDN World In Focus contest was selected in the top 22 out of 220,000 entries! I was pretty excited!

I’m committing to update this thing WEEKLY! I know that’s really ambitious but I think I can do it. I will let you in on more and send you some of the videos when I can.

- Austin