Arkansas Photography – {Project 52- Week 1}

Project 52….. I know I need more goals and to be more goal driven, but for some reason this scares me. Weird. I know. Maybe its the committing to a year long project. Maybe its the forcing myself to share more of my photography to the scrutiny of others and myself. I think that’s it. I think its the judgements that I don’t like, and honestly want but fear. I don’t share a lot of my personal photography because it is for me. I know how that sounds but you have to know me. I am sooooo hard on myself its not even close to a good thing. See, I don’t just want to produce a great image for someone, I want to learn to create the BEST image for someone. I want to be better then I was yesterday and better then I will be in a year. So this project scares me because I know I have so much room to grow, and putting myself out there before I’ve grown, to show how I grow…. Yeah that…scares me. But I need it soooo here is step one of Project 52. I hope you somehow enjoy this…;)

Along with this first project post, the other photographers we are doing this with, decided on some fun questions to give everyone a bit more insight into who we are. So here we go!

1. What is the first thing you see in the mornings?
My Beautiful wife!!
2. Three words that describe your personality.
hahah..ummm…. quiet, loud, passionate
3. One thing you wish you could do, but can’t.
Play the Cello
4. First song that pops into your head………NOW!!!
The Girl by City and Colour
5. What got you started in photography?
My parents let me use their full manual Minolta 35mm and I fell in love with it.
6. What do you love most about photography?
love…holding the expression of love still in a frame…love is the greatest thing God has given us! And I want to share it.
6. What do you hope to learn/accomplish from this project?
Find myself and my point of view more strongly…and to grow back into creativity. The world crushes creativity too many times.

Enough of me.
Here is My Amazing, Beautiful, Talented, Loving wife!

 

1.)   Most mornings I wake up to our sweet Adalyn’s face.  She comes into our bedroom and gets close to my face and says, “Wake up Mommy the sun came out”.  As soon as she sees my eyes open, she then proceeds to ask me for crazy things for breakfast.  Usually her request is for chocolate milk, cookies, or cake.  Sometimes I like to give into those requests just to see her reaction.

2.)  Three words to describe my personality:  thinker, mellow, & giving

3.)   One thing I wish I could do, but am unable to at this time would be to travel overseas.  We both love traveling and have a long bucket list of places we dream of visiting.  Hopefully, as our business expands this dream can become a reality!

4.) The first song that popped into my head was “Just a Kiss” by Lady Antebellum.  I am one of those annoying people who love listening to songs on repeat and right now that is my song on repeat.

5.)  Taylor has been building his photography business for the past 5 years, but my journey with photography began 2 years ago. My degree is in Speech Language Pathology, but God had a different plan for me.  Never in a million years would I have thought that I would become a photographer! Taylor had been shooting weddings on his own for a few years when a coworker of his, Nicki, had a daughter getting married.  Nicki wanted Taylor to photograph her daughter’s wedding, but she knew the value of having two photographers versus just one.  At that point Taylor would have hired a friend for a second shooter, but Nicki wanted me to do it! When I first heard of her plan, I laughed! My knowledge of photography was two fold: how to turn on the camera and how to find the green rectangle that meant automatic mode! The only thing I used Taylor’s camera for was to take pictures of our then 1 year old, and she wanted me to photograph a wedding! Lucky for me I was married to a very talented photographer, who taught me as much as he could prior to the wedding day.  I made sure Nicki and Ashley’s expectations of my photographs were low and that anything I got would be an unexpected bonus to what Taylor took.  I survived my first wedding and had a few good images to show for it, but it was a great learning experience for me! After their wedding, I began shadowing Taylor at all of his weddings and was able to learn a lot from all of those experiences.  I was blessed to be able to start out by shadowing an experienced and talented photographer (no bias here….haha) who has taught me everything I know… thank you babe, I love you!

6.)  What I love most about photography, especially wedding photography, is getting to be apart of one of the most important days of a couple’s life. I love seeing how new their love is and their ceremony reminds of the vows Taylor and I exchanged seven years ago.  We don’t have very many photos from our own wedding and what we do have isn’t very good at all.  We had a church friend photograph our wedding back in the days of film for $100.  My biggest regret from our wedding is not having the photographs to bring back special memories from our day.  Since I can’t change what we’ve lost, I truly love being able to give other couples those memories on their wedding day.  Also, I love “working” with Taylor during shoots and bouncing ideas off of one another.  I am really looking forward to seeing what God has in store for our business and our relationship!

7.)  My hope for this 52 Project is to get in the habit of shooting for the fun of it and not just for paid sessions.  I also hope to stretch my creativity and make myself think outside the box.

 

 

When you are done here Head over and check out the line of Photographers that we have joined in this project…Starting here with the talented Jon Yoder!!  Jon Yoder Project 52