Celebrating your successes. A record of happiness and fun.

Many years ago I was the director of an advertising agency. It was an interesting time in the business. This image comes from a shoot we did in 1983 or 1985. Our crew had just finished shooting images for an ad campaign for a retailer who had upscale flower shops that also sold good Champagne and chocolate, as well as fresh blooms.

We we're photographing models doing explosive openings of Champagne and trying to capture the moment bubbly wine came rushing out and spraying all over the place. I can remember that we were shooting on a couple of Pentax 6x7 cameras and our lighting consisted of a bunch of Novatron power packs with their cheesy plastic heads.

Back then we capped every shoot by celebrating. We'd all have some Champagne at a shoot like this one, then we'd assume the "Jet Pose" and, if we were still reasonably coherent we might all go out to dinner at one of our favorite Mexican food dives.

Somewhere along the line photo sessions seemed to become more and more routine and we started only celebrating the big budget shoots. But when I looked at this image I was instantly reminded of the words of the CEO of a 1990's telecom company. His mantra to his "troops" was always: "Celebrate Your Victories!!!!" His company succeeded in "celebrating" through over a billion dollars of stock holder's cash in a little less than 18 months, so you know he took the idea of the morale building party seriously. And I was thrilled to be along for every mile of that sybaritic journey. :-)

I've decided to re-institute the idea of celebrating our victories and the victories represented by good shoots for my clients. Obviously, it's now a different time and the celebrations will be a bit more low key. But now, while I'm visualizing success, I'm going to remember to stock my refrigerator with a case or two of good Champagne. I'm just starting to remember that this is supposed to be a really fun career. Screw the recession. Raise a glass.

Celebrate your own victories and successes. There will be more than enough time to ruminate over the bad stuff...