I’ve been a professional photographer well more than a decade at this point. I’ve worked with thousands of families to preserve every milestone between birth and death. Photography has been the most rewarding career that I never knew I wanted. I suppose the old adage is true, “third time’s the charm.”
I’ve owned cameras for as long as I can really remember. I used to love when we’d get one of those cheap little disposable cameras at Walmart or K-Mart growing up. As a matter of fact, the first major purchase of my own was to buy a Panasonic camcorder for $600 from a local electronics store when I was in the 10th grade. I thought I was so grown and I took such good care of that camera. (I still have it, by the way! I wonder if it still works!)
After I’d graduated college from North Dakota and moved back to Arkansas, my parents surprised me with a puppy that I’d fallen in love with one day when my sister and I were visiting shelters. I’ll say it until I die that Charlie Einstein was the best gift I’ve ever been given. I didn’t have a camera at the time to take pictures of him with apart from the very questionable camera in my Motorola Razr flip phone, so I went to Walmart or RadioShack and bought a small point and shoot Panasonic Lumix. (I swear I didn’t have an affinity toward Panasonic…it must have just been a brand I easily recognized at that time, or one that was just readily available in this area.)
It was this little camera that started helping me really fall in love with photography. I kept it in my pocket, or in a backpack I’d carry. I used that camera for several years. As a matter of fact, it was this camera that I used to take photos of my first nephew when he was born and up through when he was around 2. I remember the first photo I took that when I looked at it made me feel like maybe I needed to take photos more and maybe even for other people. It was a shot of my nephew…brilliant blue eyes, freckled face, eating a slice of watermelon that my mom was feeding him.
Since turning pro and shooting on a consistent basis for myself and others, I’ve accumulated quite a collection of what I refer to as Career Favorite photos. Photos that leave me feeling a lot like the photo of my nephew did. I’ve had a folder on my desktop labeled “Career Favorites” for years, and each time I make a photo that has something special about it that connects to the inside of me, I add that photo to this folder.
A photo might be added to this folder because of the colors…or the angle/perspective the shot was taken…or the action that was frozen…or it’s the culmination of a series of events…or maybe it just simply has something to do with the subject itself. Maybe it’s a combination of some of these things. Maybe even I don’t fully understand what it is about these photographs that meant they would end up in my “Career Favorites” folder.
There are a handful of photos in this folder that I knew the half-second before I even pressed the shutter button that that frame would 100% be added to this esteemed collection. I wish I could fully explain it. Part of it is a feeling. It’s how the photo makes me feel. It’s how I feel when I make the photo. It’s how the subject or action makes me feel.
It’s a connection.
It’s a very deep connection to a very impermanent fraction of eternity, and I just happened to be at the right spot, with all the right elements, having learned all the right techniques and technology, standing ready and watching for that perfect singular second when my gut says “NOW” and all of these things align in the tip of my finger atop the shutter button of my camera.
Welcome to my blog.
I can’t wait to open this folder with you.
-M-