beach day

engaging

i'm going to be honest: these two aren't engaged. they're married. and i bribed them to pose for me with a family picture. they have a little boy named liam who is cute! cute! CUTE! i'll post those another time. this time, i want to focus on this, the most realistic of engagement sessions.

"if you could do the wedding thing all over again, what would you do differently?" i asked.

both: "we would've kept the money."

yeah. it's amazing how much all that stuff matters one second and the next, it's all just silly.

to liz something

i have a friend named liz. liz is like the energizer bunny. she has fifty times the energy of a normal person and she channels all of it into different projects at one time. it's impressive. like when she decided that she felt strongly about homeschooling? wow. it was all homeschooling all the time. or how about the importance of family? well, i think you all read her comments whenever i tapped that subject. she is passionate. she is wordy. she is liz. i just get exhausted thinking about putting that amount of effort into anything.

well, i've almost (almost!) gone all liz over this photography thing. so ryan comes home and i just start yammering away.

"see this? it's called blah blah blah. it occurs when blah blah blah. i think i should blah blah blah so i can blah blah blah. . ."

poor ryan. but you know what? he's gone all liz on mountain biking. he got a mountain bike and he started mountain biking early in the mornings and on saurdays and all of the sudden he's like, "see this? it's called blah blah blah. it occurs when blah blah blah. i think i should blah blah blah so i can blah blah blah. . ."

and now we're getting ready to go to mammoth for a week with all of ryan's family (read: 20 people in a 12 people condo) and ryan's all over the idea of mountain biking. so he gets online and he downloads the map and it's got all of these trails all over it and so he spends all of his time staring at these maps and planing which ones to take and blah blah blah and then, guess what?

he mails it to his dad, who has also suddenly gone all liz on mountain biking and his dad's so EXCITED! that he and ryan get together and start talking like, did you see that trail it's got blah blah blah. . .

so now ryan and his dad want to print the map out and frame it.

to which i reply, "you win. you have out-lizzed me."

congratulations you two.

one is silver

so after i aired my latest insecurities, hernan called me and was talking to me about photography. he said, "you have your own style and you're getting better at it."

i said, "i have no idea what you're talking about, but i like it."

may i just say thank you to all of the kind and sincere friends that are out there to offer me a kind word when i am feeling discouraged, even if i don't understand what you're saying?

thank you, i really mean it. it's nice to know a girl can get a little discouraged and have some kind support every once in awhile.

feelin' down

it seems like i'm surrounded by a ton of hopeful photographers. everyone is a photographer. i can't tell if it's because i hang out with people with like interests, or if everyone really is a photographer. but when i'm standing in the midst of so many and most of them are much, much better than me, i wonder: what am i doing? why don't i put my camera down and let them do their job? why would i strut around among them, pretending that i know what's going on, that i have some sort of handle on the topic?

right now i feel discouraged and i can hear a million voices in my heading, "just give up! just give up!" it's hard to keep going when you hear those voices.

i'm grateful for jasmine star, who makes me feel like i'm okay, even if she doesn't know me.

and, for jen osullivan, who is amazing in a way that makes me feel like i can get better.

and ryan, of course, who thinks the world of me, even when i don't deserve it.