Photog blog #4
When doing photography as a career it is never a part time job...you may spend part of your time Taking pictures and editing, but the rest of your time is spent delivering cd's, booking other sessions, and thinking of new "eye-catching" ways to bring in more customers. Even as a hobby it takes a lot of work. Pictures are SO important to people that customers are hard to come by if you aren't constantly creative in your advertisements. But when you hit that road bump and start to run out of steam and ideas for advertising, you number of customers goes down, your profit amount goes down, and your stamina goes down. It's like one big circle and its very hard to break out of. So you have to keep in truckin'!! Don't give up! If God has given you the gift of photography USE it! Don't throw it away because you've had yourself a mini brain freeze;) it happens to everyone!! You are not the only one who is working as hard as you are to get as far as you have gotten! No big time, hot shot, money-making professional photographer has EVER just picked up a camera and said "eh...I think I'll go make some big bucks today and take lots of amazing jaw dropping pictures". No sirrybob! They started from the bottom just like you and I! They went through(and I'm sure still go through) many brain freezes and had to fight to come up with different way to advertise. You can't be successful without fighting for success! "The hardest things to get in life are hard because they are worth it. The easiest things to get in life are easy because they are pointles". So when you are down in the dumps about your business, you dreams, your hopes...just tell yourself to KEEP ON TRUCKIN'!!!!! :)

Photog blog #3
Sometimes I think to myself, "what would my hobby/gift from God be if photography didnt exist?", I day dream about it being volleyball or soft all or running.. Some sort of sport for sure. But then I think....what would life be like without photography? No one would know how beautiful so many places are. No one would know how terrible some places can be. No one would know the true visions of the tragedies that have occurred in the past. No one would know how pure and perfect a sun set on the perfect date would look like...all of these things would be almost impossible without photography. I think about my husband and when we are older. I wonder if the Alzheimer's disease will affect him as it has other members of his family... This disease runs in his family and its just kind of scary sometimes to think that one day he may not recognize me. He may not recognize our children, or friends, or the rest of our family...it hurts to know that this disease, despite so many years and so much hard work of making life time memories to keep forever, this disease can take it all away in a matter of weeks...maybe less time even. This is a huge reason of why I am so thankful for photography. Because if in fact this disease does strik our memories it will never be able to strike our hearts. The photographs we take now could help our memory later. They could help us remember our most cherished times spent with our most heritages people. The photographs we take now can remind us later of why it is so important to help one another in our nation and remind us that "a house devided against itself, cannot stand". Photography -as I have said before- captured some of our most precious moments. But not only that, it also gives us inspiration when we feel we are in the dark. When we just can't seem to grasp our kinds around things from our past, moments that everyone else laughs about but we may not always be able to remember, our photographs will inspire us to believe that even of it takes a photograph to remind us of who someone is...our mind doesn't have to remember everything because our heart feels it all.

Photog-blog #1
I have heard some people say things along the lines of "photography is not a job; its a hobby", "oh well you don't have to be a genius to push a button", or even "photography is just a lazy way to earn some extra money and an easy way to rip people off". These things may be true for SOME people out there who try to call themselves photographers but for us TRUE photographers it is not! Just because we don't carry around big, heavy tools and we don't have to be in charge of 20 plus people under neath us does not mean that we don't work for what we earn. I know for myself, I work very hard at trying to make sure that my customers are getting what they want. We as photographers buy all of our own props, spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on equipment that we use for sessions(it takes a while to save up these amounts too), and although your session may only take an hour or two, we go home and work many more hours on sorting through the pictures taken and editing them to your satisfaction. With my photography I prefer to stay as close to the "natural" side of things as I can. I LOVE LOVE LOVE editing pictures but I do not like when a picture is edited so much that you can barely tell who or what they look like in real life compared to the picture. I don't see photography as "just some job". I see it as my passion; my dream career. It is the one thing I have loved to do since I was big enough to hold a camera and I have never once felt tired of it. I love getting the satisfaction comments and emails from my customers after a session, I love being able to see the looks on the faces of those who haven't always had the best self-esteem but when they see the pictures i took of them their face just lights up; They feel beautiful and filled with joy. I love doing photography because I love what it bring to our tables; memories. The memories we have of past duty stations, loved ones that may have passed, that once in a life time dream wedding that you still remember on your 35th anniversary, that day right before you got to meet your child after 9 long months of anticipating what they are going to look like... Pictures are worth MORE than 1000 words, and photography means more than 1000 clicks; It captures our most beloved memories with our most beloved people. Photography captures our present so that we can always remember it in the future.

Photog-blog #2

To be a photographer you need a lot of patience And dedication; but most of all you need passion. If you don't have a passion for photography and yet you try to do it as a career, you will not get very far. Photography is a very popular job choice and you have to do a lot of constant advertising in order to make sure your being seen through the crowd of photographers. They are all over the place! I feel like even if you aren't taking part in it, if you are choosing to be a photographer you are entering a world wide competition. Some competitors are friendly and others are just down right viscous! If I am I'm the middle of a session and another photographer steps into my shooting relm I do my best to work around them. The land I'm shooting on isn't in my name and the photographer and other customers are not in my shots so why worry? That's how I look at it but I've heard horror stories of photographers who are opposite..it's crazy! And some tend to think photography is a piece of cake...:p