A Healing

 

"I was born with a camera in my hand", is a common phrase said by some of the best photographers.  Unfortunately, this is  not a common phrase for me.  Photography was something I had always loved, even as a little girl posing My Little Ponies, but photography came in a different way for me.

As I grew older, got married and had children, my life was put on hold to be a stay-at-home mom.  Although many sacrifices came with this job, it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.  A little over 3 years ago my husband bought me my first DSLR camera.  I started off by taking photos of tutus that I was making and selling but found that I was getting more attention for my photos than I was for the actual tutus.  Over time, I started to get more and more requests to take photos of friends and family.  Shortly thereafter, like a lot of other people in this country, my husband lost his job.  This came as a huge sadness to our family as we lost our home, the majority of our belongings and even our beloved dog, Dougie.

This change in our life is what gave me the opportunity to finally go after what I loved: photography.  The passion to fight to make the business a success came with the struggle, hardship, hurt and pain of this new change.  I loved photographing and capturing the happiness in families, the joys of newborns, the true love of weddings and the success of graduating seniors.  Photography is what made me happy and healed a lot of fears and frustrations that were occuring in my own life.  Being able to photograph all these great moments in other people's lives reminded of what is truly important. 

This is now my business and I am loving every moment of it.  Running your own business can consume you but I have been blessed with meeting so many amazing photographers and clients, many who I can now call friends.

What has photography done for you? Today, show us how much you love photography and show us the photos you love.

Images and words courtesy of the lovely and talented Desiree Niumata of Desiree Niumata Photography.  You can also find her on Facebook and her blog, as well. 

A Very Special Gift.

It's no secret that most of our photography is of good things: weddings, new babies, birthdays and the requisite pet photo, to name a few.  But what about the other photos? The ones that tell a story no one wants to tell?  Last August I was a summer camp photographer and had the privilege of meeting so many great kids, but one girl was special.  She had a brain tumor and was in the fight for her life but sadly, on April 13th, she lost the battle at the tender age of 4.  Not too long after, her mom contacted me: I would like for you to attend Ann's service and burial on Friday, and if possible captivate it with your wonderful lens.  It was definitely taking me outside of my comfort zone as I had never done something like this before, but how could I not? It was the least I could do for this wonderful family and to honor the child they had lost. 

Have you ever gone out of your comfort zone when photographing something or someone? Please, share your special stories with us...

In Loving Memory of Ann Marie Ambrosio-Cerna, June 17th, 2006 - April 13th, 2011

cathartic

Lately I am finding real peace the when I use my camera to work through something personal.  Life gets messy, sometimes scary, but when I pause and acknowledge those moments through my lens, I feel a release.  This is not for everyone, this is for me.  I am visual. I process life through my lens. I snap, I write, I move through, I let go, I get on with things. This was one week out post hysterectomy. This day 1 week ago I was under anesthesia, surrendering everything to the great unknown.  I feared many things.  I feared not waking.  I feared waking.  I feared the possibility of pain, for surely it would come. I woke. I did have some pain. Now I was 7 days out, fresh from my morning shower when it hit me that those very same moments 1 week ago were so scary and yet here I was safe, changed, different, but well and healing.  I wanted to mark that moment.  I wanted it to be real and to see me, the me now. I wanted to nod and tell this me all will be well, and so i picked up my camera and clicked. I have no shame in this photo. This is the real 39 year old me.  My soft belly and thick legs. That tattoo i got at age 22 when i was so sure of everything and so full of myself. That bunion on my right foot that sticks out and prevents me from ever wearing awesome heels. This body that birthed 3 babies, but now has no uterus. It is all ok. All will be well. Funny thing when you share a piece of yourself you ultimately wind up touching others. For we are all women, mothers, sisters, daughters, sharing our human experience. We all feel, struggle, grieve, fear, celebrate, love, and mourn. I feel when I use my camera to work through something personal, somehow it makes it not so scary.

The sisterhood is full of courage, grace and emotion.  You inspire me to be more open and brave with my own photography.

Do you give yourself permission to photograph your real emotions in difficult times? Do you find your  photography cathartic?

feeling a shift

February hit me hard these last 2 weeks.  I felt a funk grabbing hold and digging in deep.  It was mocking my ever waning resilience I fought hard to have this winter as if to say, "HA! go ahead pick up that camera. I dare you to find anything pretty around here right now!", and so my camera sat quiet. The very last day of February I woke to sleet and freezing rain pouring down on all our snow, the grumpy oil guy was here trudging snow and muck through my house, my teenager flooded her bathroom, I felt the weight of it all crushing down on me.  If I had a white flag I would have waved it. Then yesterday, just one day after I had felt so defeated and uncreative, I woke to sunshine, the first in days.  Puddles emerged from under the ice.  A bowl of handpicked lemons, a gift from sunny California, sat basking in in that beautiful sunshine in my kitchen,  I picked up my camera and for the first time in some time I felt happy as I clicked the shutter.  All at once I realized the ice was not the only thing thawing. I flipped the calendar page, gladly saying goodbye to February.  March feels full of hope and promise to me. Tomorrow I may get knocked down by winter again,  but somehow by turning the calendar page it all feels doable now. I feel a shift, do you feel it too? Hello March, I think I love you.

What do you do creatively when you feel in a rut?  Do you let your camera sit silent, or do you force yourself to pick it up anyway?  Share a happy hopeful image here with us today to welcome this new month.

the hard work

DOUBT.  It isn't something we talk about too often. Being or pursuing the artistic side of us opens up amazing things—beautiful things—but it also leaves us vulnerable; vulnerable to little voices of doubt inside ourselves. I didn't imagine these things could exist in tandem with the joy of doing what I love.

Seven years ago my son was born, and not too long after that I decided that working in an office, doing what I did and DREAMING about being an artist was no longer good enough for me.  How could I raise my son to do what he loved, when I didn’t do what I loved? Imagine my surprise when I embraced the life of an artist (the glamorous, amazingly creative life of an artist) with open arms and a full heart and started to feel as if the more I learned and grew, the larger that hole became inside of me. I had imagined myself as an artist with bluebirds singing around her head and a trail of creativity sprouting whenever, wherever her feet touched the ground and in reality, it wasn't like that at all.

Don't get me wrong, I am happier than I have ever been in my life. I feel like the whole world opens up to me daily and doing what I love feels much like meeting the man I love 16 years ago; amazingly breathtaking.

But that doesn't mean it isn't hard work.  Or that it doesn't open other doors.  The hard work isn't just running a business (which I feel is a creative amazingly rewarding thing despite the hard work) and it isn't just struggling to balance bills or the two full time jobs I worked for three years while I grew my business enough to financially support my family.  The hard work is constantly pulling something truthful out of myself. The ebb and the flow of an artist’s mind is tricky I'm discovering.  The true hard work is within myself.  There may be artists who only experience confidence, who never doubt themselves, who don't look at other peoples work and feel themselves shrinking next to such brilliance, but I have never met them; not in person, not in real life.

The thing I think so many of us experience, and so few of us talk about the feeling of giving up completely. I feel that way a lot actually. Daily…maybe? However, the thing I have learned since my artistic-self sprouted from the pupa where she lay for many years, the thing I do when I feel the self-doubt or the aversion to create for fear of not being good enough, is to just ignore it. I figure being miserable and still doing what I love and doing what my heart tells me to do is much better than being miserable and doing nothing. I think, if you boil it down, that is what courage really is. It’s not facing the world head on, it's pushing through your own self-created horrors and deciding you aren't going to let the darkness control you.

So every day I take some breaths, I take my camera (or my pen or my computer or my voice or my love) and I create.  I hear the doubt that sometimes tries to stop me, I shake it off and I create until I make something that makes my heart sing, and then, simply, I try to do it again.  Because it is either that or give in to the fear, and I have decided that fear isn't going to win.  Love is, art is, joy is, creation is.

I photograph my way through these "doubt times", accept them, ignore them and shoot right on past them.  That's what works for me.  What works for you? How do you deal with your fears and keep moving on?

Photo and words courtesy of guest blogger, fine art photographer Melissa Squires of A Girl in Love Photography.