In high school I always KNEW what I wanted to do.  I knew I loved psychology.  I always have.  I took AP Psychology in high school, and did awesome.  (And luckily I did it then.  NO ONE likes Psych 101.  You’ve got to suffer through to get to the good stuff.)  I never had to change my bachelors degree once.  (I think the average is three times?)  And at the end of my four year degree, I was starting to get burnt out.  It was still interesting, but it wasn’t where my heart was.  But my last semester I was DEFINITELY not going to be changing my major.  So I tried to think of what other classes I would want to take.  To take advantage of all the great opportunities to learn that you have while being a part of a university.  I made a list, and narrowed it down to two: auto mechanics or photography.  You can guess what I chose, but how cool would it be to know how to change a tire or the oil better than my hubby?

Anyway, I took the photography class and FELL.IN.LOVE.  I always knew I liked photography, but when I  looked at one of those big cameras with lenses that come off and having to actually hold it up to my face to take a picture instead of looking at a screen, I got completely intimidated and knew there was  just no way.  (AKA: a SLR).  I don’t read manuals.  Check that.  I read manuals.  I start at the beginning, with the stubborn drive to read the entire thing, cover to cover.  And after page 3, I don’t pick it up again.  So there was just no way.  But this class introduced that world to me.  It introduced the world of a digital SLR, and what parallax error was.  It taught me about color and light and the rule of thirds.  And before the end of the class, my sweet husband bought me my first SLR.

On Sunday afternoons, my husband (again, super, incredibly sweet), would pack my daughter up in the car, I would pack up my camera, and we would go out.  Just to shoot.  We would drive all around to different towns around our little college community.  Nate would push Mackay around in the stroller, and try to patiently wait for me as I took pictures of almost everything from almost every angle imaginable.  And I fell in love with old, small main streets, secluded farms, and rust.  For my final project in my class, I made an album of doors.  Old doors.  I knew I loved old buildings, and through my shooting, realized that the first thing to get replaced and, in my opinion, downgraded, were the doors.  So I went on a search for old doors.  And I loved that attention to detail.  But I didn’t photograph people.  I was too scared.  They moved too much.  It wasn’t in my vision or my plan.  So I just kept practicing on my inanimate objects, my beautiful, rusted, inanimate objects.

But then we moved to Texas.  Dallas, Texas of all places.  Nate and I both graduated, and we moved our little family a 24 hour drive from home, in a Uhaul, to a place neither of us had ever been.  No family or friends in sight.  And while I was sitting at home in Dallas, no rust, or beautifully old buildings to speak of–just really big metal and glass ones, I had the idea that maybe I could photograph people.  I had been practicing enough with my camera, that I thought maybe I would know what I was doing.  I curled my daughter’s hair, put on her cutest outfit, took her outside in the front yard, and grabbed my camera.  I took a few shots, and immediately brought them inside  and uploaded them to my computer.  I tried to do something called ‘editing’, (you’ll see what I mean with the quotes later), was happy with what I saw, got a confidence boost, put them on my blog, and created an ad through Craigslist.  FREE PHOTOS!  To anyone who had the courage.  I just wanted to build some sort of a portfolio from pretty much nothing.  I was scared, but hoped that “FREE” would take the burden off a bit.  It did.  I had a few, (whole ton), of completely stressed out moments.  Actually, after every shoot I had those moments.  But everything always worked out alright.  And from each experience I learned.  And then I learned even more.  From there my confidence grew, which fed my creativity.  And I haven’t looked back since.  It has become a wonderful outlet/hobby/obsession for me.  And for me, I can’t imagine my life without it.

And here’s to my first “photoshoot”.  What a sweet model.  And I mean “editing”, because of the weird tilt that I did to the photo.  (We’ve switched computers a couple times, and I can’t find the original.)  And I hate to point this out, but I think her sweater is more in focus than her face.  I can’t believe I just admitted that.   Live and learn!

As a follow-up to this post.  Grandma Gwen died three years ago yesterday, April 22.  At her funeral I found out she loved high heeled shoes.  She would go to the store, find the highest heels she could, try them on, and then ask the store clerk if they had any that were higher.  She later said, in her 90′s, that if she knew then how bad those heels would have messed up her feet….she would have worn them anyway.  (I couldn’t agree more.)  So here’s to you, Grandma Gwen.  And to everyone who is around their grandparents.  Find out how cool they are.  Because chances are, they’re pretty awesome.My dad sent me this picture in an e-mail after he read my other post.  His words, (with my editing), “I like this photo because it was taken the day the doctor let her out of bed.  She is 18, her and dad had been in a car wreck that left her in bed for 3 mos.  She needed help in walking that day. Her dad wanted her picture taken.  She said because her hair was such a mess she wore this hat.”