Winter Wind Photography - Picture Tells A Story

Naming a business is a tricky thing, and when I decided to make my mainstream photography work official, I spent days brainstorming what to call it.

The traditional advice of course is to simply call a photography imprint “Your Name - Photography,” but in my case that was going to be a problem. Much of my professional work over the last decade and a half has been tangentially or directly related to the adult entertainment and sexuality education worlds. I did that work under the name that most people know me by, which I’ve also used for my activism, and my life in the pagan community.

I certainly don’t attempt to hide who I am, but I wanted what became Winter Wind Photography to be insulated a bit from those aspects of my life. I particularly wanted the option to maintain at least a flimsy wall between my mainstream and my kink/explicit photography sites, which is why neither uses my name in the URL.

So where does Winter Wind Photography come from?

Most people know me as “Winter,” though properly the name I’ve used in a variety of communities I belong to is “Wintersong.” “Wintersong” is the whistling of the wind blowing through barren trees once they have dropped all their leaves. I’m a photographer, and that’s an auditory experience, so for the reasons I explain below, I felt Winter Wind was a good, and more visual, alternative, that spoke to who I am, while avoiding the use of Winter Tashlin or Wintersong Tashlin in the proper business name.

Here’s the thing: the air in wintertime is clearer than during warm weather, as the cold air doesn’t hold much moisture. There’s nothing quite like the view on a cold, clear day; or night for that matter, when those willing to brave the cold will see stars shining like cut diamonds. And of course, when we talk about a winter’s wind, the word that first comes to mind for many people is “sharp,” which is also one of the more desirable traits in a photograph.

My hope with today’s photo was to capture that feeling of clarity, cold, and sharpness, that I had in mind when I settled on Winter Wind Photography as the name for my mainstream photography work and website.