Wedding: Amanda and Andy

~E

Ahhhh! School has started! What happened to my summer vacation? I felt like this was the fastest summer ever!!! What happened? What happened is The Locket was swamped and all I did was shoot photos. Oh my goodness I loooove what I do and hope that I always am as pumped about my job as I am right now, but I do need to slow down and enjoy the small things in life that I forgot about over this past CRAZY summer. Sarah and I went to a conference in Chicago a few days ago - the night before the first day of school to be exact - and we learned all kinds of new tricks about how to cut our work time on the computer down so that we can do all those things we love but let our business go in front of. I suppose everyone has times like that where they get their priorities mixed up and forget about themselves. I can't wait to tell you more about the conference and about the people we met!

I'll be honest, I was not excited at all about going back to school. I love working with kids and I love sharing my talents through others, but it's the paperwork, the grading, the discipline that I can live without. Our photography business is all of my favorites. I get to meet new people everyday, be an artist, travel, be creative, explore new places.... and I could go on forever. Teaching school was not on my "I'm super pumped up" list. After going to this conference I was not only refreshed and excited about the potential of our business, but I am excited about the changes I want to implement in my art classes. This conference was about the freedom to succeed and what it takes to get there. David Jay encouraged us to, "Invest your time is someone else." He explained that you'll get back so much more than you put in, if you just invest in someone else. In teaching that seems apparent, but in photography I sometimes question myself. I love what I'm doing so much that I have to constantly recheck that I am also focusing on others.

At the conference we were asked to think of one word that describes us as an individual, and not our work/art. The word I thought of was servant. I decided to become a teacher because I wanted to be a servant and share my talents through others. In my business, on the other hand, I have often questioned this idea of service. I sometimes feel greedy because I'm doing all the things I love and still getting paid for it. With the help of Sarah I am learning there are ways that I'm serving and that we're giving individuals and families art they could not create without us. On our long drive home we thought of ways to display this idea to others and through others and I am excited about our plans. We have to weed through our creativity and choose one thing to tackle at a time.

Sorry for the insanely long post! I do this to my college roommates too - I'm MIA forever and when I do get around to writing I go nuts!

David Jay quoted Picasso, saying "Art is the elimination of the unneccesary." Sweet, right? Leave out what we don't need. Isn't that true about life? If only I could figure out how to put that into practice! In the meantime, I'll keep trying...

~ E





















Since Sarah wasn't with me for this wedding, there were several moments of downtime where I had to entertain myself. I took the couple's rings and started to do my thing. There was a little boy who started to follow me around and ask questions. After a bit of time he went and got his own digital camera. I taught him a few tricks and he helped me come up with new ideas.