Posts Tagged ‘business’

Kids on Film

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

I am a liar.

A straight up lying liar who lies with her lying mouth (and keyboard).

Despite saying no less than a dozen times RIGHT HERE on this blog, plus another million times out loud to real life people’s ears, I have decided to turn my photography addiction hobby into a business.

There are a lot of ways I’m justifying this change of heart to myself, but it basically boils down to this: I want to get better. I want to be really, really good at photography. I want to take a million workshops and classes and go to conferences. I want to upgrade my camera and my lenses and my editing software. I want – NEED – as much practice as I can get. And having a business is the only way to do all that.

Unless I win the lottery. Then free camera and tiny American flags for everyone!

Photography is not a cheap hobby. I mean, really, almost nothing is a cheap hobby. Please ignore the giant stash of yarn from my knitting hobby, or the giant pile of cookbooks from my baking hobby, or all the dead plants from my gardening hobby – or really, don’t ignore them. Realize that I’m learning from those ventures. I’ve been consistently interested in and learning about taking pictures since I got my Nikon right before Evan’s 1st birthday. I’m not jumping into this. I’m not even going to start charging right away. I’m going to try to do it right, with lots of advice and help from people who can say MISTAKE MISTAKE MISTAKE when I start making stupid decisions.

Please, feel free to roll your eyes at me. Call me just a mom with a camera. You can’t make me feel more unsure of myself than I already do, even though I have plenty of awesome friend who are lovely and encouraging, even if I know they’re thinking “I knew you were a liar!” behind my back. For every second I think “I don’t have to be the BEST EVER to do this – I just have to have work people think is valuable!” a voice in my head says “Valuable? Bish, please, who do you think you’re kidding? If you give a blind monkey a camera he’d get some lucky shots sometimes too.”

So really, I’m somewhere in between. Not there, but on the road. And I guess I just need a little help paying the tolls.

I haven’t been blogging this week because I’ve been editing pictures, and I realize I like doing that almost as much as I like writing words and stories and maybe also just a tiiiny bit more some days? Because it’s 100 effing degrees and I can’t think straight but damn if my kids aren’t the cutest little practice models and taking pictures of them makes me happy.

norwich free academy_-31

p.s. I think I’m going to call the business Ginger Snaps. Get it?

p.p.s. I also think I’m going to try to talk people into letting me do what I do know, just with their families. Go to the park, on a picnic, the aquarium, feed the ducks, the fair, whatever. I’ll just tag along and act like the paparazzi – with maybe a gentle nudge into the best light and cutest poses. Stupid/not stupid?