Every season I end it with saying it’s my busiest season, but this season? This season takes the cake. Only, there’s no time for cake. There’s no time for anything. I’m editing photos furiously like a madman so I can be done(ish) by December 1st(ish) so that I can enjoy the season! Last year I didn’t enjoy it at all. I was working three jobs and one was keeping me up at all hours. This year I’m going to try(ish) to only be working one job by the end of the first week of December. Can I do it? It’s a challenge. I accept. Speaking of accepting challenges, I totally had no plans to write this intro paragraph. For Finish the Sentence Friday, we’re sharing something previously written. Mine was about a challenge I accepted in 2012. Read on!
My history of photography, which I will detail more vividly on my upcoming website, began very simply with a camera collection. I was a child who collected, whether it was Ken dolls or Troll dolls or tiny metal cars, or even the standard coins and stamps. As I got older, my interests got more age-adjusted, if not even a little shallow. I collected colorful socks and jeans that made my butt look good. The camera collection started with a neon-colored point-and-shoot and a Polaroid. By college, I had several point-and-shoots, a big Polaroid, a video camera, and that i-Zone mini Polaroid. As it was with most of my collections, I never used these things as much as I should. Rather I’d fold and unfold things, arrange them delicately, dust them occasionally. I pretty much kept things behind a glass case. That glass case protected them. It protected me too.
That’s how I explain things that I fail to do at first, and then do with feverish intensity eventually. An artistic eye? Sure. My mother is one of the greatest artists in history and her father, my deceased grandfather, has been written about and spoken about on talk shows. Other than writing, it took me some time to figure out my personal outlet for the artistic expression I felt nearly boiling over inside of me. I had a few of my photos shown at the local mall’s art show. “Aha!” I thought wisely.
That was the beginning. It built slowly. A boyfriend gave me my first “serious” camera. My parents gave me my first serious lens from B&H in NYC. They sent that same boyfriend on a mission and he came back victorious. I became victorious. Lenses are really, really important. That’s why they cost the same as a kidney. I started taking photos, mostly of my boyfriend and animals. Eventually I branched out into other people and other animals. People seemed to like my work. I started to too.
Then I had Scarlet, and you kinda know the rest. I had my first digital camera and I took it out of hiding and shook off the dust the morning she was born. No lie, it was 4:00 am and I knew I was in “real” labor and I was packing my hospital bag and the camera came along. I hadn’t a clue how to use my digital camera with its pesky on-camera flash that I hadn’t learned how to shut down yet. And the whole white balance issue. It was a big WTF for me for awhile. Lenses and software and a better trained eye for color came next. I became fully comfortable with photographing Scarlet and sharing those photos.
In the last year or so, but more numerously in the last several weeks, I have finally taken on other people’s children. It’s so hard! Scarlet recently had school photos done and they weren’t in the standard of cheesy face against a weird colored background. They were more candid and in the grass. More my style. Which is ultimately why I didn’t order them – that woman had five minutes to do what I’ve been doing with Scarlet for three years! It made me more aware that I have my work cut out for me. I won’t know everyone I photograph. I haven’t. I am aware that their children (and themselves) are precious cargo who deserve to be photographed to the best of my ability. That’s what I can do. That’s what I owe the world.
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This is me linking up, as one of my favorite things to do, with Finish The Sentence Friday. This week’s topic is Share Anything Previously Written And there’s still time to write yours. Come link up with your spin: HERE.
