You ask me why I do this?

a good question;  I'll grant you that.  Sometimes it's good to sit back, have a look and wonder if what you spend your time on is worth it.

I'm delighted to respond with these . . .

This is why I do it.  This is why I stopped a much more conventional, predictable career to juggle a somewhat 'iffy' one.  This is why I sometimes stare at my computer screen for hours, tweaking one little  spot on a photograph.  This is why I adore shooting folks with a camera, why I'll carry the thing around 'til my right hand feels like it might break off!  This is why I press the shutter a million times for every one image that feels perfect and why I believe that there is magic in still photography.

When I sit down and begin to upload shots from my card into my computer, I know it's what I should be doing.  When the pictures begin to reel across my screen as sneak peeks of moments captured in time, I remember it's the right thing.

I get to capture folks I care about, with folks they care about, doing what they love.  Often what they love is simply touching, sitting with, holding hands, laughing with the ones they love most.  There's not enough of that in the world, to be sure.  Capturing those moments - forever - that is good stuff.  Real good stuff.  I'm thankful.

You won't have to see many of these images to see the bond between these two special people.  I love catching the moments when they look into each other's eyes or slip into holding hands or laugh so hard that their eyes shut.  Good stuff.

I've said it before, friends, and I'm sure I'll say many times again . . . this is the good stuff and I get to be part of preserving it.  

Thanks for trusting me with your memories, friends, and thanks be to God for cool people and happy families.

You'll find the entire session at Mollie and Ben

Snap. Got it!

I love it when something wakes me up, pulls me out of wherever I am and grabs me, makes me pay attention.  The other day, as I was readying my equipment for a shoot, I saw this.  I wasn't there to take this shot.  This little guy was on his way to ball practice, not part of the photos. 

But something made him stop, turn around and stand right there in the doorway for just a second or two.  My head was busy scanning the area for the perfect light, when my eyes caught sight of him.  He just got me, standing there, doing whatever it was that he was doing.  

I grabbed my camera, hurried to put on the lens and snapped as quickly as I could.  Just as soon as my finger hit the shutter, he was gone.  I don't know why he stopped there, stalling for just a moment on his way to practice.  I just knew that I wanted to capture it, knew that was a moment that wasn't coming back.

There is nothing remarkable about this photo.  Technically speaking, it's not superb.  The reason shots like this are special, at least to me, is that they represent moments.  They are tangible pieces of history that we can look at and touch later, when this little leaguer is a man.  

He must walk in and out of that door fifty times in a day.  It's all very average.  But years down the road, he won't look like this.  That little uniform won't fit.  He'll have moved on to bigger things.  I wanted this shot because I scanned the area and my eyes stopped to focus on a moment - an average old moment when a five year old slugger was about the important business of growing up.  

I pressed pause for just a sec and we can stare at that later for as long as we want.

What will you see today?  What might your eyes focus on while you are busy doing something else?  Is there something you might want to press pause on today?  

You could take a photo, write it down, say it out loud or laugh about it with a friend.  Try that; it will last longer that way.

Check out these dreams . . .

A few months ago a friend sent me some photos that touched me, photos she found on the web of a baby, snapshots that a mother took while her baby slept.  Many of you may have seen these; they're a treat.  If you have not spent some time on this special blog, I hope you will today.  If you've seen a few of the photos before, you might like checking out the 'behind the blog' explanation and watching the YouTube video.

Remember the post about my dear friends who made their kids a firepole?  (http://deana-pressingpause.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-install-firepole-ive-known-this.html)  This story, and the love behind it are similar to me.  This is a story about a mother who actually pressed pause on a fleeting moment, savored it, took time for it.  I think it's a story for us all.  We don't have to be mothers or photographers or artists or anything special . . . we just have to be in the moment.  

Look what this mother did while her sweet new baby slept.  Think of the love, the creativity, the savoring that went into this.  Enjoy.  Take a moment yourself to daydream, remember, imagine.  

What might you do to press pause today?  

Use this link and spend a few moments.  You'll be glad you did.  Enjoy Mila's Daydreams.

http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/p/about-blog.html

Documenting memories . . .

Wow, I'm glad I do what I do!  Cameras and photographs and art captured me early and I never got over it.  Now, I'm fortunate enough to do what I love, and I'm thankful.  There are so many different parts of photography, so many actions for each image, and I love that process.  I regret that I never learned to develop my own film, never had a dark room, never got to truly learn those steps.  I believe the sequence of events, the slow emergence of a wonderful captured moment would have intrigued me; I would have delighted in the stages of development and in the final product.  I hate that I missed that.

I don't dwell on that for long, though, because there are plenty of moments now, enough steps and stages to create a piece that presses pause on life and adds to a family's history.  It's magic, really, and I am thrilled to have a hand in it.  There is something about still photography; I've said that before.  There is something so powerful about shooting an image, tweaking it in just the right ways, paying close attentions to it's composition and the light around it and having it to hold and to study for years to come.  There is magic in that - having a photograph that captures a moment just the way you remember it or the way it really felt and being able to look back at forever.  I love that.

Find an old photograph that you love.  Take a look at it today.  Remember why you love it so, recall how you felt on the day it was taken and relive for a moment in your mind how it all felt.  Enjoy.

I love these photos because when I look at them, I can hear her squeaky giggle and I can feel her soft touch.  These make me smile . . . hope they make you smile, too.