Ashley has an eye for setting up her shots with those very props that will appeal to your unique style.
And seems to be able to capture that exact expression that defines the person she is photographing.
How she does it I will never know. Her talent is not mine. I am awed by her skill and sometimes envious. Occasionally I will catch a shot through sheer luck that makes me think of her photos. I'll feel like I accomplished something great - a photo almost in her league.
She has begun to make photography (and especially portraiture) her freelance career. She is good enough to make it. I'm fairly certain she wouldn't want to imagine her life without photography in it. I'm thinking it's a safe bet to say she'd give up nearly everything else to keep that form of art in her daily life.
We all take pictures, don't we? As a mom - especially a blogger mom - we have some standard equipment too. I have a Nikon D80 DSLR with a battery grip and two so-so lenses. It seemed a natural graduation from my Nikon N65 and my Nikon LX before that. I took two courses of photography in college and enjoyed them quite a bit. Before kids, I often took special excursions to new places just for an excuse to take interesting snapshots of everything I found there.
Organic Sister explained once how these photo excursions grounded her and I found it to be one of the best explanations I'd heard. Shooting photos can instantly bring the mindfulness, the here-now-this-moment that we all seek when we feel totally lost or overwhelmed.
I completely agree.
But times for me have changed quite a bit since before kids. My DSLR is not light. The battery grip makes it especially bulky to tow around while I'm already towing around a baby, a toddler & a diaper bag. If only I had a third (or fourth or fifth hand), right?
The DSLR snaps quick photos with no delay. So while everyone sings the Happy Birthday song to my 2-year-old, I can snap snap snap away with the hopes of randomly catching a shot that says, "I am sooo Mazzy and this is how I am as I turn two and Mommy and Daddy will want to remember it this way forever!" The Perfect Shot.
But that means I end up with a ton of "wastes." I have to go through the wastes and try to figure out which are worthy to keep, which I can delete, and how to delete en masse without guilt or regret. These are, after all, images of my most important life loves. Throwing them in the virtual trash is hard. What if I delete just the one that years down the road would have reminded me of them most?
Even harder is throwing them in the literal trash can. If I do sport the money for hard copies of photos, can I ever throw them away? Must I transfer them from home to home to closet to closet, always, never ending, only multiplying over time?
Or maybe I'll just leave them on my hard drive. But then one good computer crash reminds me that hard drives are far too vulnerable for such precious images. I'm busy, so I don't do much about that except feel pangs of guilt for not backing up my hard drive.
Every now and then - when life settles down enough (big belly laugh here please) - I get all inspired to really do something concrete about the pictures. I'll put them in photo albums! I'll separate them by year and then put them in chronological order! I'll put little captions under each picture so I remember what it was! I'll find a great online storage option! I'll order lots of photo books! I'll! I'll! I'll!
A few days later real life takes over and yet again, it is pushed to the back burner. My photos remain in their giant box. My wedding album (from 2002) is still unorganized. My hard drive is still not backed up. And the worst part of all: I dread lugging out my big giant camera for everyday occasions to much that I often now take no pictures at all.
For me, pictures aren't a life love as they are for Ashley. They are a burden.
As this realization was forming, I thought of my Amish builder's wife and the conversations we've had. They don't have pictures or cameras. She doesn't have that burden. Uploading photos, transferring photos, organizing photos, ordering photos, storing photos - these tasks are never on her to do list. Honestly, I wish they weren't on mine.
What other "fun" things that I am supposed to enjoy are actually burdens, if I'm truthful with myself?
The first one is easy. Driving. I hate driving. Before kids, driving was a lot of fun. Now it is something I'd readily give up if I could. It's expensive, dangerous, unreliable, and steals far too much of my time. But the worst part is that it has become expected of me.
Driving is completely ingrained in our lives now. We don't live in an area that has public transportation and that was our choice. But the amount of driving we do is uncalled for. In many ways, I still live my life as if I were in the suburbs, with grocery stores minutes away and friends within walking distance. Because gas is still fairly cheap (darn it) and we have a running car, driving still falls squarely on my shoulders for just about every party or gathering and about half our household errands. It's an expectation.
It's a burden.
Facebook. There's an easy one. It is nothing but burden for me. It is full of "shoulds." I should wish them a happy birthday on their page. I should respond to their status update. I should comment on all their photos. I should accept them as a friend. I should "like" whatever it is they want me to "like." Funny enough, the one thing I do on Facebook still is upload photos. It burdens my perpetual to-do list.
Grocery shopping. What a burden. How about doing that a lot less? How about going back to the mindset of being creative and making do without instead of running to the store at the drop of a hat?
Worse yet are coupons. They are insidiously burdensome. Here I have this slip of paper that says I can save money on something that I buy anyway. Only a crazy person (or a lazy person) would not take this opportunity to save that money! Now it does have that little expiration date on it, so I'd better plan to get to the grocery before then. Oh, and I don't want to forget my coupon, and all the others like it, so I'd best organize them somewhere. I should cut them out to make it easier on the cashier of course, and the people in line behind me.
(I could have been writing or reading a book or baking with the kids all this time.)
I'm seeing a light here. A way out of these burdens. I'm beginning to notice them and to question them. I'm recognizing that just because something is Generally Recognized as Fun (or Useful or Frugal) doesn't mean it's not actually the opposite for me. It could be fun for me, or it could be stealing my time from things that truly are fun for me.
For now, I'm reducing my driving, trying to establish solid routines at home, moving to once a month grocery shopping, continuing my Facebook fast, and recklessly throwing coupons in the garbage.
And all those photos? Ashley is so good. Why not pay her a couple times a year to take our photos for us and forget the burden of the rest? It would probably cost me about the same in the end, and I can throw all those "shoulds" and all that guilt around my photos in the trash right along with everything else.
