External Reason #1: Others seeing themselves as beautiful

   Before I had my beautiful daughter, I pole danced for a hobby.  I am just getting back into it, but have stayed in close touch with the special women from my pole dancing class.  One thing I would love to be able to do is bring women the life-changing feeling that I had the first time I saw a photo of myself dancing: That's me? I'm beautiful!

     Photographing pole dancing has a million challenges - lighting is dim, people are in motion, and static poses will look... static.  Women will also not believe you if you take "posed" pics and say "Look, you're stunning!"  They will think that they look stunning because you posed and edited them.

     I have recently started a "metamorphosis" project where I grabbed my remote, some terrible lighting and a crapload of clutter to capture my baby steps back into pole dancing.   I was thrilled with the results - you can see my inelegant lines of dance, my ridiculous environment and lack of space.

That being said, due to privacy I can't post the picture where I am just grinning ear to ear because of the joy of motion.

So, I want other women to feel the power of seeing themselves in the light of beauty and sensuality, the power of their motion and self-possession.  

(can you see the remote control in these pics? Ha!)

Internal Reason #2: CHILDREN

     Child photography has captured me ever since I met Tina Ryan, proprietress of Life is a Highway Photography.  Her use of color, texture, and landscaping to capture children's playfulness and beauty really inspired me to pick up a camera and capture more of my own child's growth and development (since Tina probably doesn't want to move in with me, I can't cook).

        Since capturing this moment, one of my first "shoots" with the DSLR, I have been hooked on trying to find ways to document the uber-romantic nature of children.

In my other life, the one that pays the bills, I am a board certified behavior analyst, and I supervise home programming for children and teens with autism.  I am often toting my camera along w/ me, either to take pics of their materials for creating choice books, or because it's too hot to leave the camera in the car.  One mother asked if I would photograph her child, as her family abroad had never seen pics of him.  She is unable to get him into a photo studio like picture people, and all her spare change goes to his education.  I can't share those pics as I don't have permission from her, but despite bad lighting and bad staging, I was able to capture some shots that completely reflected his spirit.  That day sealed the deal: I have to learn as much as I can about child photography, because I want to photograph children with special needs.  It feeds both my internal and external motivations and marries my three loves - children with special needs, making people happy, artistic expression/photography.

Why Photography - part 1, how i got here

Having come to photography at the ripe ole age of 34 (I received my first real camera for my 34th birthday), I picked it up originally because I was taking shots of my newborn daughter with my point and shoot, and I never felt like the images reflected her as I saw her.  I started looking into how to capture her skin tone, her activity, etc etc... and each new technique I learned sent me on a wild photography hunt - using fill flash so I could capture her sitting on the beach without facing her into the sun, for example. Increasing the exposure so I could capture her in so-so light.

nikon coolpix, playing w/ exposure

black and white mode, nikon coolpix

Using the different modes on the point and shoot... until I became frustrated by the lack of ability to take a nice portrait with that blurred background you see with professional photographers.  Which brought me to aperture.  Which brought me to... my first DSLR.

with vivid mode, nikon coolpix

1st blurred background, nikon d3000

The first rush when I took a picture of D., with a blurred (albeit cluttered and not ideal) background, and with a shutter fast enough to catch her in motion.. that rush has never subsided. I love the whole process - setting it up, catching it in the moment, downloading to see what kind of surprises you got, minor editing (I only have iPhoto - cropping, maybe slight exposure adjustments)... and the satisfaction of that one shot that feels like Thanksgiving.




     Photography captured me again because it is no longer prohibitively expensive to learn.  In high school, my dad bought me a Pentax SLR, and I went out and shot one round of black and white, then gave up, the results were so terrible and expensive.  Digital photography can be a hobby that doesn't break the bank, is immediately satisfying, allowed me to do things with images that I can't always do with words.  It's something I can fit in to my hectic life - unlike dance, which I need to set aside blocks of private time for, or writing, for which I need solitude.

     I'd like to explore some of those internal and external motivations in separate posts, because this is getting ridiculously long.  Some first thoughts are:
INTERNAL:
Color
Children
Details
Change
Relationships
Dance - beauty of motion and the female form

EXTERNAL:
Making mommies and daddies happy
Making others see themselves in beauty as I do