Bare with me, I feel there are some things I just want to get out in the open, things I’ve been meaning to write about on this blog.

A few weeks ago I was honored and privileged enough to speak at a class full of  university students  on entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin.   I was nervous at first… mainly because I still feel like a university student myself.  More often than not, I’m embarrassed of my age, not because I am too old, but because I feel I’m not old enough. I worry people wont take me or my work seriously, and even if they did maybe my business would be discredited.  Believe me when I say I feel like I’m in my mid thirties at the least.  Things moved quickly for Dustin and I (we had a baby before marriage, and have since decided to do just about everything in a less conventional manner!)  and it laid the groundwork for me (and us) growing up quite quickly and putting our noses to the grindstone. 

I worried that these college students wouldn’t take me seriously, or what  I do seriously.  Then I realized, it’s really quite the opposite.  here I am, three years out of college, doing what I want to be doing and making my living by doing it.  Maybe, just maybe, that’s just the type of person they want to be hearing from, instead of someone who’s been in an industry for 40 years.  it gave me a bit of confidence at least.  You could also throw in the fact that we got pregnant at 22, moved across the country, eloped (we’re just so scandalous! i KNOW!), and then decided to have another baby and somehow acquired three dogs along the way.   To say life moves quickly is an understatement. 

Yesterday, I went back in the archives of this blog and looked at my first couple of photo shoots.  I’m so embarrassed.  I think my cheeks actually burned and I contemplated deleting those entries so no one could ever see what kind of photographer  I was.  I wanted people to believe  that I could always take nice pictures, and that I never did any stereotypical poses or did terrible post processing in photoshop or any of the other things that a beginning photographer might do.  And even as I write this now, I am a little bit nervous and feeling quite vulnerable because I know just mentioning going back into the archives will prompt you to go back into the archives, the very thing that I feel self conscious about!

but this post is really all about feeling vulnerable, and throwing myself out there.  What a shame it would be to delete those first posts,  because what a journey it has been thus far. Even though those photographs may not be award winners, they are just as much a part of me, and photography, and the beauty of growth as the most recent photographs I post here.   They were photographs I did of people who I loved, who I was (and still am!) friends with, at a time when our first baby was still so tiny and I was trying to make a go of my own business- struggling, not having any idea how to push forward, to create this idea that I had in my head of being able to be a stay at home mother, a GOOD mother, while doing something i felt passionate about WHILE bringing in some sort of money.   However,  it burned inside me, and i couldn’t let it die.   My husband… oh my god, my husband is the most supportive man I’ve ever met in my life.  Every time I was frustrated, or just knew so little that I didn’t even know WHAT questions to ask, everytime I cried not knowing where to go or what to do he was right there, believing in me.  And, when my photos stunk, he told me they stunk.  And some of them really did stink.   And also, I’m not always a good mother or a good wife.  The work/life balance thing is really, really really hard. I think if  I can just stay a good person that maybe it will make up for some of the lack of good wife/mother/photographer type of thing. 

As of recently, I’ve been getting a lot of words of encouragement, of support, of love, and appreciation for me and the photography.   It means more than you know .

I do read every single comment and every email and every facebook wall post and message. Although I may not be able to reply to them right away (parenting calls…) I take to heart what people write.  Not only that, but I feel the internet is a whole world of love (although I have found that there are crazy mean people lurking about out there as well) and support. The blogosphere is a mighty mighty thing, a place where I found my voice, a place where I laughed with other bloggers and cried with them, a place where I felt like it was okay to be real and exposed, because other people were right there with me. 

Not only do the kind encouraging words you write mean a lot to me, but it makes me want to give it right back.  I am in this profession because it enables me to surround myself with positivity.  Think about it:  wedding day. birth. newborns. families. love.   I truly believe that you are comprised of what and who you surround yourself with.  If you are a bridezilla, please, please do not contact me.  I will not photograph your wedding regardless of how much you pay me.  I just dont bring that kind of karma into my workplace because my workplace also happens to be my home and my life.   Right now, I believe I have the most amazing clients, who are incredible people who give an incredible amount of love to those in their own lives. 

Ugh, it sounds like I have the perfect profession/life/family.  I totally do not.  If you could have seen me today, leaving from my husband’s rugby game halfway through it because my kids were incorrigible and we were half full of mud and we had left the diaper bag at home and my kids both had dirty diapers and Pierson was having an allergic reaction to the sunscreen, and Tavish had skipped his nap and my patience was thin…  you would not associate that person with the person writing this post right now. 

(this post is all getting somewhere… stay with me…)

The thing is, art is always subjective. It’s always greener on the other side.  We, as artists, can get sucked into this black hole of self doubt because the work we create is made by us.  The ideas have been rolling around up there, we’ve molded them, worked with them, produced them, and usually by the time they are created we’re already sick of seeing them.  So when I see another artist’s work it always seems more awe-inspiring to me than it does to them.  Like-wise, I have to remember that about my own work, and put that into perspective.  Not only that, but all our art is stolen anyway.  Give me a break… dont deny it.  It’s all stolen.  One could argue that ALL newborn photographers are totally just ripping off Anne Geddes, and we should all be subject to copyright infringement.   It’s all a bunch of BS, I believe that we’re inspired by everything around us and that we pull bits and pieces out from everything.  to have an original thought, an original idea, may be a once in a lifetime thing.  One true originality, that has never been done before or influenced by anything else, would be a lifetime achievement (if it is even possible at all).

this post sums up everything i’m feeling about this absolutely perfectly: http://www.austinkleon.com/2011/03/30/how-to-steal-like-an-artist-and-9-other-things-nobody-told-me/

You see, I had no idea that I was going to be a photographer. It just sort of… happened.  I mean, I  guess I knew it was going on – the United States of America and my state in particular do acknowledge me as a legal business, as that is how I, myself, registered it, so I must have had some inkling that I was a photographer… right? I mean, I haven’t found myself registered as a metalsmith in any of the 50 states, so it can’t just be a coincidence…  but even as we were  getting published with Martha Stewart I didn’t actually really believe that I was a real photographer.  It felt more like i was just pretending to be, and fooling some really really influential and amazing people.   HAHA Martha! Joke’s on you!  But really, I slowly began to realize that my ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy was actually kind of working.  I looked at the facts: people see my photography, people hire me for my photography, they pay me money (crazy!) and they print out the pictures and put them on the wall, and then they refer their friends.  That series indicates to me that one would, in fact, be a photographer.  Yet, whenever I had to fill out the ‘employer’ section on a form I always crossed it out, or left it blank. Sometimes I just put ‘homemaker’ or ‘stay at home mom’.   I never really knew what to write.  I felt that if I put down “self employed – SugarLeaf Photography”  that someone would totally call me out.  “dude.  you do NOT own your own business. you are too young.  and also, you’re not a photographer.” 

Then, a few weeks ago I was in Verizon wireless doing something or other with my phone and the guy asked “so, who do you work for?”  and out of my mouth came the most amazing sentence: “oh, I dont work for anyone. I work for myself. I own my own photography company”.  

bam. just like that.  and there it was.  “I work for myself.” 

It surprised me, and I felt immediately ashamed.  i felt bad that i was able to be in Verizon wireless in the middle of a typical office workday, with my two children being a mother to them, and then say that I worked for myself, while he was standing there working for the man.  Not that I feel I didn’t earn this, that I didn’t work and struggle and CLAW for it, I just….. felt guilty. 

but, talking with my good friend Sabrina from Slice of Lemon, she said the most amazing thing to me the other night. i’m going to sumarize because she said it much more eloquently- her religious teacher told her that she needed to take the hurt or pain or frustrations she felt and channel it into something positive,  to mold it into something new- something positive- and throw it back out into the universe.

Imagine if we could all be those filters?  filtering out the bad stuff, but instead of discarding it, we could work it in our hands and create new life out of it?  something positive? and then we could throw it back out there into the universe. 

So, with that in mind, this year i’m going to be holding workshops for photographers.  one in Florida, and one in Wisconsin.  I want to take all that frustration that you’re feeling with your cameras and your photography and channel it into something so much better and postive, and be able to create some stunning images as well.   There will be many many more details coming about this little endeavor, but i just wanted to be able to get the ball rolling officially on the blog.  i remember those times when i just couldn’t seem to get it, to grasp concepts, to take more than 2 steps forward without taking three steps backward.  So many photographers struggle, and because no one offers genuine help, i feel it makes a lot of people in our industry very jaded and unwilling to help the newbies, therefore perpetuating the cycle of negativity and deconstructive competition.   I want to break that cycle and offer a different more positive view on  photography and the reality of owning your own business. 

here’s what you need to know right now:

1) you do not need to be a professional photographer to attend the workshops.  you can take however much or however little as you’d like away from the sessions. if you are a professional you’re going to get a lot out of this!

2) you need to have a basic understanding of manual settings on your DSLR (or SLR!). if you dont have a basic understanding you need to first get out your camera manual, and go through it with your camera.  next, you need to go to Slice of Lemon and read the article i wrote on Manual settings (and while you’re at it, start following Slice on your RSS feed/google reader, and look out for my bi-weekly posts about photography in the ‘photos’ section)

3) photoshop/lightroom is going to help you immensely, but it’s not completely necessary for the workshop.  You will, however, get so much more out of the workshop if you can follow along with Photoshop and Lightroom (or one of the other if you dont have both). if it’s something you’ve been thinking about purchasing, and are waiting to pull the trigger, now’s the time! get comfortable with it before the workshop, as it wont be a lesson on post processing, merely going through a typical workflow of what i do with my images after they come out of my camera, and how i make them into a final work of art. 

4) pencil in June for the Florida workshop and August for the Wisconsin workshop, and get ready to soak in information like a sponge. i have so many exciting things to tell you about what i’m planning!  soon to come… soon to come…

5) message me if you are interested, so i can add you to my email list and let you know the updates! also, be sure to check back here, and on the SugarLeaf facebook page (‘like’ it!) for more updates!

i’m so happy to have opened myself up so vulnerably to you all (wow… there are a lot of you out there…) and i’m hoping you’ll do the same for me!  i can’t wait for this new little adventure we are on…