It’s that time, isn’t it? The time of year where we reflect on auld lang syne, remembering mostly the good of the year behind us and thinking a whole lot about what lies in the year ahead. A year that will never be again leading into a year that has never been before. It’s the sort of time I’m grateful for, as there is nothing quite like a new beginning – like the dawn of every morning I’ve watched roll in for the past five weeks. With it, comes hope. With it, comes relief. With it, comes promise.
This has been a good, good year. One full of travel to many places, new friends and faces, huge life changes, and more blessings than I could begin to count. Not that it hasn’t been hard, at times. No, not at all. It has been, but I’ve learned more this year about the good things that come out of the hard things. The refining moments, you might call them, where the dross gives way to something better – more true – underneath.
Professionally speaking, this was my first full calendar year as a “just a photographer.” Some days, it’s hard to believe that this is what I get to do with my time. And having had the partial-year of 2010 behind me, I knew more of what to expect… what to hope for… and what to work towards. The year started out with me and a ruled notebook full of pages of notes I’d written out one December day of 2010 during my own personal “Think Tank” at Bongo Java. Cups and cups of coffee, a growing curiosity, and a determination to make some headway into a territory I was both entirely familiar with and yet so undecided about. I’d taken copious notes the month previous in a PartnerCon session with Jeff Jochum where I was struck with the notion that I did not, in fact, know very much about “my style.” Not just as a photographer, but as a person. And so I delved into me. And in doing so, realized what it was that was different about how I photograph and how I relate to clients – at least from my own perspective – instead of feeling always so very much the same. With that, I resolved to stop caring as much about what everyone else was doing and, as my favorite yoga instructor always said, “do what I can do, don’t worry about the rest.” With all of that, came a
reconstruction of my website… blog… but even more than that, my thinking – which bled into my personal life in ways I didn’t expect. It was like taking what you know is good and presenting it in the best way possible, and for the first time in my career I felt confident about what I was presenting. That made a difference, not only for me, but for my business, as well.
Concurrently, things were changing in
my world of weddings and they were scary and exciting, all at the same time. Because for the first time, I could decide how much or how little or even how exactly it was I wanted to shoot weddings. And for as long as I was shooting portraiture under my own brand, moving from under the wings of a more established wedding brand to shoot weddings on my own was terrifying. So it was, this year, that I eased into it – finishing up my associate weddings this year at the beginning of July and ending July with the first under my own brand – shooting the wedding of our dear friends
Ben & Maria in the city of Charleston. I could not have imagined, at that time, that my hope of taking on weddings in 2012 – albeit a limited number – would come to light. I’d been asked, many times, what “limited” meant exactly, and I’d always said – “at least five… no more than ten,” especially given the expected arrival of our newest family member. Right now, I’m sitting at five weddings booked for next year with some lovely, lovely couples who I can’t wait to spend time with and photograph – sharing in the joy of their big days.
And as for me? Well, personally speaking, it’s been a year like no other. I rang in the new year in Sorrento, located in the Italian province of
Campania with my best friend, just days into our two-week trip around the country. The timing of that trip coincided with a much-needed reminder of all of the things I’d begun to lose sight of towards the close of 2010. As an artist and as a person, I was diminishing – giving way to feelings of comparison and envy, seeking validation from a world of people whose opinions of me shouldn’t have mattered. But they did. I had put my most important relationships, even, on a slightly lower pedestal than what I was seeking to gain from a faceless mass. And so for two weeks, I played and discovered and sought beauty in a place I’d never been – known for so many things, not the least of which is its food and art, drink and aesthetic. I felt there, things I hadn’t felt here in so long and knew I wanted that back. I missed Cliff in a way you sometimes can’t when you take a person for granted in the everyday. I wrote and photographed because I could and wanted to, not because I had to. So when I came home, it was different. I was different. And life was changing right along with me. There was loss and gain, and I was resolved to take it all in.
In the early spring, one of the greatest desires for our year and for our forever – well – it was granted. Out of the outflow of all that had taken place in those weeks since I took the tests, I wrote
a note to a baby who was growing quietly and perfectly inside of me. What many people don’t know is how harrowing those early weeks were, going in and out of the doctor’s office for blood work, taking progesterone supplements, and facing the prospect of possibly having lost the pregnancy as we went into our first ultrasound appointment. The greatest lesson in all of that unknown – that fear – was how much I was going to have to let go as a mother. Not only as a one-day, holding-my-baby mother, but even an expectant mother. Too, that so very much of what I think is within my grasp of control – truly, is not. Her arrival was another lesson in that, because just when I thought I was
about to burst and was spending every day in wonder and anxiety and fear…
our girl arrived, nearly right on time, into our world and for five weeks and counting, it has been turned completely upside down and right side up. The days have both a rhythm and an unpredictability they’ve never had before and will never again be without.
So I know, already, the whole of 2012 will look markedly different than 2011 and I’m so grateful for that. Because this, this is what I’ve always wanted to be. A wife and a mother, a creative and an adventurer. And I want only to face 2012 with an open heart and as few expectations as possible, because honestly, I’m learning that life these days – at least for me – is best lived that way. That, and of course, with heaps of gratitude. So thank you. Thank you for reading this, thank you for caring about my life and my work, and thank you – so many of you – for allowing me the honor of being your photographer.
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