I feel like I have always had something happen to help push me into delving deeper into the land of photography. The first push was finding out I was pregnant with my first child November of 2005, we bought our first digital camera (Panasonic DMC-FZ30) so we could take lots of pictures of the new baby. I started reading books on how to photograph babies and children and started practicing as soon as my new little model arrived in August 2006. In the beginning of 2009 my sister asked me to take pictures for her wedding in August of that year, we had been thinking of upgrading our camera to a DSLR (and by we I mean my husband, I foolishly thought I did not need a better camera, thank you Nick for not listening to me!) and finding out she wanted a candlelight wedding made us (Nick again) realize we needed a camera that did better in low light. Nick went on the hunt for a new camera via the internet and I checked out every book on wedding photography our library had! We ended up getting a Nikon D80 and even though I felt better about the equipment I was not sure about the one operating it (me). After pouring over books for hours I realized I needed to practice some of what I was learning or I was not going to survive the wedding! I got an idea (straight from God, definitely not from me, if it was up to me I would never have asked!) to ask my church group for stay at home mom’s if I could practice on them for the summer until my sisters wedding. This awesome group of ladies dressed up and brought out their families to parks all summer long being patient as I figured out how to take portraits, by the time my sisters wedding came in August I felt like I might manage to not ruin her wedding(can’t you just feel the confidence!).  The wedding went better then I could ever have hoped for and I came away knowing that I could not stop taking pictures of people now. I wanted to make images that would make the person smile and maybe they would also see for an instant what God sees when he looks at you, a beautiful treasure that is worth any cost. You can see a couple of images from her wedding here.  I said all of that to share this one image, I took it this past summer while practicing on one of ladies from my stay at home mom’s group and her two little boys.  For some reason this picture says so much to me, it reminds me of a mothers love, safety and how much little boys like to try out there wings while we hold our breath and pray they don’t fall too hard.

“A Mothers Love”