Fighter

 I was trying to decide what my first official post would be on the new blog. I have so many sessions sitting in a file called “to blog”. I’ve been waiting to get this snazzy new blog up to post all the amazing people I’ve been photographing lately. I was resizing and sorting through images tonight, when I decided to watch  a movie.  I hit play on the TiVo for a movie that has been sitting there for a while. “Up in the Air”. I started watching it, but immediately realized, there was NO way I was going to get through it. The first time I saw George Clooney start in on laying someone off, I felt sick. Like, head spinning, nausea inducing, sick. It brought me right back to a place I was almost 2 years ago. In a corporate meeting room, sitting face to face with my Human Resource Manager and my Boss. Feeling sick. Papers in front of me to sign, saying that I understood what they were telling me. I was being laid off. From a job I had been in for almost 3 years. With a manager I loved as both a manager and a friend, a co-worker who sat behind me who shared my same passion for art, from a desk that held frames of my friends, photos of Sophie, stacks and stacks of event folders that I had just been working on seconds before. I felt humiliated, rejected, like a loser. I was escorted from that office to my desk, had to “pack a quick box” of my belongings while everyone watched. I was walked outside with security watching, and told they would send the rest to me in the mail. I remember sitting in the parking garage of my fortune 500 company sobbing. Feeling like there was no way I could drive home. Home, now a place that I could no longer afford, in a car that I couldn’t afford to pay for. It was life changing. Why am I rehashing a story that’s almost 2 years old? Because, when I watched that movie tonight I realized, had it not been for that moment, I wouldn’t be here today. I came home that day and cried and cried. I slept for a few days, stayed in my jammies and touched up my resume, and started searching for new event jobs. 

Then I looked at my camera, that until that very moment, had been a side job. I had photographed weddings as they came, and clients whenever I had the free time. One camera body, one lens. I didn’t even own a flash, I had alway borrowed or rented.  My camera was something I had poured my evenings and weekends into, reading online articles, joining forums for photographers, and listening to people talk about how much their “day jobs” were crushing their spirit and passion for photography. I decided then, I was no longer going to be that person. I would not walk across the parking lot everyday to a job that didn’t inspire me. I would no longer work for people who I didn’t want to take into my personal life. Iemptied my bank account and bought a second camera body, 2 lenses, and 2 flashes to add to my camera arsenal, so that I could do this full time, instead of just on the side. It was all or nothing. I was going to do this. I built my website, put together a new pricing guide,  and prayed. Prayed that Brides would love my work enough to trust me with their memories, prayed that new Mommies would want me to photograph their babies, just as much as I wanted to. And they have. 

Every day I wake up and cannot believe this is happening. I look at my 2010 calendar, with 20 weddings and an uncountable amount of portrait sessoins, and my 2011 Calendar, with 18 weddings booked and counting. With Brides emailing me telling me that they can’t wait to start families so that I can photograph them as well. With Mom’s crying as they look through slideshows of their children’s photographs. I cannot believe it. I have never been more thankful in my life. I have never worked longer hours, never put so much emotion and heart into a job, never laughed as much, never cried as much, and never been so scared in my life. But I did it. Thanks to you all. So many of you out there reading this have supported me from day one, referred clients, cheered me along when I was feeling scared, asked me to photograph your wedding day, your baby’s first 2 weeks of life, your daughters 1st birthday or simply the love you share for one another. I am so incredibly honored. I realized tonight, watching that movie, that I will never let anyone make me feel that way again. As I launch my new blog, with a new logo that is so incredibly “me”,  I will continue to make my business grow, because its mine, and I love it, and all my clients who have come with it. It is because of all of you that I have succeeded, and it is because of all of you that I will continue to put my whole heart into my business, to provide memories for all of you to have forever.  I’m a fighter. And because no blog post should go without an image, I decided to post a sneak peek of another Fighter. A fighter in her own right. Meet Aria, fighting to find a cure for her type 1 diabetes, and never letting anything get in her way.