I took the winter off from photograhy sessions. I was busy. That was good. But I started to feel stressed. Not only with the quantity I had to produce out of my livivng room during late hours that my kids were finally asleep for the night, but sessions were hard for me. I had this self-placed pressure to get the perfectly-posed, perfect photograph - because that MUST be what my client wants. Turning down work saddened me. People obviously loved my work and wanted to pay me for what I do. I had to turn down a couple jobs - partially due to indoor lighting issues (which I've happily resolved!) but more so to spend some time re-discoving who I am as a photographer. As I'm "branding" myself, I want to be true to who I am and what my style of photograpy is as I put myself out there. So I read a lot of blogs, magazines, and learned even more about gear. Every photographer that I realize I admire and look to for inspiriation has had something in common. As I sit here in Bonita Springs, I feel as if I'm perfecting my art of photography. The journey of going from hobbisy to pro photographer has been a long one for me. And that's okay with me. I hope that every photographer has a similar moment of self-discovery.
I don't just want to properly expose and perfectly pose your family. That's not me. I'm not saying that it has zero place in my photography, because even I want a nicely-posed family picture every now and then. It's just not my passion or what I'm going to be striving to do during a session.
What I want to do more than anything is evoke emotion. My single most favorite image that I've ever produced is a picture of my daugher Ryan sitting on her knees in my bedroom looking down next to my 1.5 foot tall jewlery box dressed in my jewelry from head to toe. In fact, I think that image got the most Facebook "likes" out of every image I've ever shared with y'all. I like to play with lighting. I like to capture raw emotion. Her tongue hanging out of her mouth as your daughter draws. Your son smirking because he gets to dress as Spiderman. You get it. And most importantly, so do I.
