BREAK A LEG. Facing challenges with a team

“Break a leg” - They say that like it’s a good thing but I can promise… It’s not. All that said - I’m in the middle of one of the biggest challenges in my career and guess what - I’m kind of loving it. I guess I should back up a bit, I’m sure I have a few clients right now with knots in their stomachs so I’ll fill in all of the details. I was pretty sure that about about 400 weddings I had just about seen everything. I’ve climbed mountains, I’ve swam in oceans with couples, and I’ve jumped, climbed, stretched, and ran in just about every way I can imagine trying to get the perfect shot. Maybe I’m getting old, though I spend way too much time in the gym to give up on that excuse or maybe this really was just a freak accident but last week on vacation with my family and a few incredible friends I took a funny step running on the beach and snap - there goes my fibula. It was a kind of surreal moment because it’s been long enough since my last injury that I caught myself sitting in the sand in pretty incredible pain saying “you’re fine Miles, suck it up”. About 20 minutes of that little mantra in my head and I gave up on it. Something was wrong and I needed to get it checked out. I drove myself to the ER (didn’t want anybody on our trip to be too worried about me) and voila a few x-rays later I hear that I had broken my leg. That was easy. I’ll be completely honest here - I went into panic mode a bit. How on earth can I get home from Florida with a broken leg? (I drove the whole way because the passenger seat didn’t scoot back far enough) How am I going to shoot a wedding on crutches? (Not only did I take some gorgeous photos my whole team rallied around me with such amazing support.) How am I going to do this week after week? (I just found out yesterday that I actually can start walking on it again a little at a time and it won’t affect this bone from healing.) The questions flooded my head and then the calm of a few amazing realities silenced them. 1. God is completely and totally in control. 2. My family, and especially my wife are 100% with me and will help me do all the embarrassing little things I can’t. (Putting on socks is a pretty tough task with your leg straight.) 3. This is exactly why we’ve spent years building up a team around us and it’s time I trust them. I honestly can’t imagine this particular wedding day without my crew.  While I hobbled around trying not to make too much noise or get too much attention Brandon was up in the cat walk shooting the bride coming down the aisle from a birds eye view. When I was caught trying to rearrange the schedule because we were 45 minutes behind Jared was running to my car to grab light stands and get the dance floor lighting set up for me and then shooting the lead position down the aisle as the bride walked down. When I couldn’t carry my biggest camera with my biggest lens and two crutches up the stairs for an incredible angle on the first dance, Melissa (my amazing wife) did it in the most adorable black lace dress and some pretty fierce 4 inch heels.  All of this was going on while Max was shooting a wedding on the side of a mountain in Georgia only to come home and spend the day today helping me with backups and meetings! I am making somehuge progress already, and I’ll be walking quite a bit by the wedding this weekend. We’ve got another round of MRI’s and more doctor’s appointments next week and I’m not exactly out of the weeds yet, but I can say definitively to our couples, our clients, and our friends that because of this team I’m doing pretty dang well. SUPER grateful for the challenge I’m going through right now. Just when I thought there was absolutely no way I could be surprised by my job I had the opportunity to slow down and hop my way (5.8 miles according to my fitbit watch) through one of the most beautiful, most difficult days of my career. Here’s to recovery, walking a little better each day, and learning to appreciate the way a challenge can open our eyes to all the ways and people who bless us.

SUPER grateful for these Money Maker straps from Hold Fast Gear. A regular neck strap on this day would have bounced all over the place on me and this system kept it right at my chest so I could focus on shooting and not falling over.