"Chance favors only the prepared mind." – Louis Pasteur
Sometimes you stumble upon the most wonderful things when you least expect them. That is if you keep an open mind and are willing to take what comes your way as essentially a long string of opportunities. How you either capitalize upon them or pass them up is up to you. I do however believe that every day you can have an encounter that is in some way truly significant. I met my wife through a set of circumstances that are downright convoluted but when I did meet her I had my self in internal and external line to meet her and the rest is romantic history. I was prepared.
Late last year I through happenstance met a very nice fellow who had a great idea and was quote passionate about it. Now I meet people every so often who wants to get me excited about something that they are doing in such a way as to get me excited enough to be part of their project. Usually I am polite and nod in support and then quietly go my way. You know what I’m talking about. The guy/gal who thinks that we should pool our talents and do a feature length movie that explores the amazing world of toothpick sculpture. Yeah, right! That’s a great idea Edna …
But this guy was different. He wanted to do a social documentary and image driven book. Cool, but! He was neither a journalist nor a writer. Nope he as a physical therapist and was totally in over his head. Unlike a lot of people he realized that he didn’t need to be this or that. He had to have an idea and boy did he. He really knew what he was talking about. Not just the subject matter but also the inherent social and cultural relevance of it all. He had worked on it on his own for almost a year before he decided to make it a partnership effort. He also realized that for this project to work he had to treat it as a business venture so when I spoke to him and he told me that before he could go into any details he needed me to sign a non-disclosure agreement I was enticed. Now NDA’s are not the kind of thing that non-lawyers talk about but he knew that his idea was good and didn’t want anyone messing up his groundwork. So I signed the paper that said that I’d keep my mouth shut and we had a chat.
Three minutes in and I was sold. Seriously. What he wanted to do was handle the writing, organization, networking and overall concept of the project and let my visuals do their thing. He had is act together, did his homework, was smart, driven and honestly passionate. In the end we decided to work together and it’s been an amazing trip so far. And we have just really started to get things rolling.
Ya see we wanted to get some work done on the project before we told anyone about it but now we can proudly officially release our baby: Denver In Color.
The idea is simple; Denver is a city that is one of the most accepting places in the country for inter-racial couples. Just yesterday on the news the headline was that one in twelve marriages are now inter-racial. The project looks at a variety of couples who are inter-racial relationships in the Denver area and what blessings and pitfalls they have encountered while living here. We have a skeleton web site up and will be putting up more content as the project evolves. We are hoping to interview and photograph about 60 or so couples of all ages to produce a broad cross section of experience. It should be the most rewarding project that I've undertaken so far.