Never give up.

How wonderful, I wrote my blog late last night and this morning I found this through another friends share on FB and had to tie it in with the blog post!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 4 years that I really started to get back into photography. My (now) husband and I would go 4wheeling, camping and just being alone in the mountains, no busy city life, just you and nature, would really put things into perspective. I started off doing the usually, up close (macro) shots of flowers, rocks, bugs, tree bark (yes, tree bark). Then moved on to landscapes, wide angle shots of wide open land. I never really got the hang of the landscape photos, I’d be fine with saying I suck at them! But it never stopped me from snapping those photos anyways and just having fun with it.

It wasn’t until 2008 when our son was born that I started playing around with portraits. Mainly because I was at home on maternity leave and in between cleaning house, folding laundry, feeding, playing, changing, and everything else baby, I wanted to have some fun doing other things. I wasn’t on Facebook, that sink hole or “crack” as my husband calls it, didn’t exist for me yet. So making fake backdrops out of canvas prints, towels, blankets and whatever else I thought would work seemed like fun. And then, I was hooked.

Looking back through my first portraits, I have to laugh. They are horrible, but I remember back then how proud I was. I put a lot of time, love and effort into each of my horrible, out of focus, cheesy pictures and I would have (and did) proudly hang them in my home, print them and give them to relatives and even create a Shutterfly Share site because I thought I was that good! I also got a lot of “feedback”, sometimes I didn’t like what was said or pointed out but sentiments set aside I knew it wasn’t personal. It’s not like I was walking into an Art School with classmates and Professors that could critique my work and provide the knowledge I sought. Instead, I was learning on my own and everyday I was learning something new. I’m thankful even today for the help and guidance of those that were willing to explain ONE MORE TIME what aperture is and f-stop was. I literally had to draw myself a diagram.. over and over and over again!

Fast forward to today and I’ve learned a few things, I’ve stayed up countless hours late at night reading my manual(s), watching tutorials, practicing settings, practicing new edits, researching marketing and boring business stuff, following others that inspire me (from famous photographers to momtogs). The last 4 years I’ve put in a lot of work but I’m still not where I want to be and I’m okay with that. Sometimes it just takes a little bit longer and a bit more sweat, tears and late nights to get where we want to be in life, but don’t give up, don’t put too much weight into what critics say and just remember that whatever it is that you do, you do it because it makes you happy. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be you.

This all sparked because I was pinning on Pinterest (newest form of crack, hurray! Don’t tell my husband, lol!) and I found some of my first portraits of our son Mr. Munchichi (nickname, of course!). Sometimes I forget why I do this, why I push so hard to be sucessful, but when I look at these photos I remember sitting on our living room floor laughing my butt off at this poor kid in a bunny outfit… Brought back memories of the Christmas Story, poor Ralphie!

So we’ve got selective coloring (or Color POP), out of focus, horribly photochopped and just outright perfect. :)

Happy Photo-ing and have a great weekend folks!

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