Friday, July 31, 2009

{getting personal...}


I’ve been trying to avoid it for a while now. I thought that maybe if I carved out enough time in my day, then my personal life and my photographic life wouldn’t have to cross paths because they would have their separate outlets…their separate spaces. But at long last, I’ve come to realize that trying to shelter one from the other is like trying to shelter me from my peanut butter or Starbucks or my husband…it just can’t (nor should it) be done!

I don’t know why I thought that my photography should remain a separate entity from the rest of me when just about every ounce of my blood, sweat and tears has been poured into it. And in all honesty, I’ve never done anything more “me” than this. Nothing has been more authentic or genuine or sincere than my photography or my pursuit of it, so how did I ever think that I could get away without having the two intrinsically linked?

For nearly four years now, I’ve been posting on a personal blog. The ups, the downs, the new, the old; for better or worse, life has happened there, or at least been transcribed there. Over time, I’ve grown quite attached to my little corner of cyberspace. It’s been an outlet of creativity, cathartic venting and endless conversation. But I’m feeling the need to simplify, to reduce the many demands on my life and somehow find a way to continue the dialogue without the strain of adding one more thing to my “to do” list (I live by the sanctity of lists!).

I believe that a reasonable solution has finally risen to the surface as of late and that is to try having one conversation instead of two. To try bringing my life more in sync with my photography and acknowledging that one never fails to influence the other. The initial argument that I had with myself in my head was that “one blog is for my professional life and the other is for my personal life” but who am I kidding? Given that I spend the majority of my waking hours focused on my profession then that, by default, very much makes it personal. My photography is personal, whether I want to admit it or not.

Nearly ever aspect of my life has influenced my plunge and my passion; my love of God and my love of my husband; my desire for balance and my desire for a life well-lived; my fear of cancer and my brush with cancer; my admiration of beauty and my admiration of simplicity; my need for creativity and my need for freedom; my quest to conquer my fear and my quest to belong to something bigger than myself. All roads have led here and any attempt to deny that merely takes away from the type of photographer that I ultimately long to be.

So this place will no longer be just about my pictures or my clients; it will be about my life and my love; my fears and my insecurities; the adventures that I laughingly call my life and my time wishing that I was just as cool as Jasmine Star!

Because that’s me…the real me, which in turn, makes the photographic me.

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