The thing about preparing for a workshop is it really makes you scrutinize every last bit of what you do yourself. We’ve been doing a lot of looking back and self-evaluating these past few days. All the reminiscing made me miss blogging here with an ache.
I used to blog here way, way more often, especially back in 2008 when Jeff and I were new to wedding photography. A lot of those aren’t published anymore, but I think I blogged 3x a week. I blogged all our weddings, all our engagement sessions, thoughts on photography, and personal posts about our marriage. (He blogged, too, but the blogging part has always mostly been mine.) I was told it got us noticed because that wasn’t the done thing back then, but we were just being ourselves. We take pictures. I write about them.
During our first two years of doing this, people kept saying how much they loved our blog. Over time, I became obsessed with editing and writing perfectly here that it started taking forever to get a blog post out, to the point where I specifically avoided it because it was so emotionally taxing. I have obsessive tendencies and set insanely high standards for our work and that certainly didn’t help. So I stopped for the most part, and only wrote when I was overcome with the need to.
I kept my personal work on my personal blog on Tumblr and stopped sharing it here. And Jeff, he just keeps his in a folder on his laptop. It’s a shame, really. What I needed to understand was that it never had to be perfect, it just has to be real. I have a bad habit of wearing my heart on my sleeve, so that bit actually comes naturally to me. I just have to refrain from editing myself to death.
Jeff and I are both introverts. We’re comfortable and funny during shoots, and we relate well with clients because we know what we’re doing there. But in social situations, it’s different. I’m a little bit awkward until I get to know a person better. (And then we’re good and you can’t shut me up.) But we have photography and writing, and outside of my family, those are all I ever really need. With photographs and words, I can make sense of the world and show exactly how I feel.
So here’s one baby step back into sharing a bit more, with some photographs I took for myself from 2010-2011. Here’s me being real.
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