The importance of this job
This has been the longest I've gone without a blog entry in a long time! These past two weeks have been very full of editing images and designing wedding albums. It's also been full of life - Zach turned 7 months old and is a constant joy in our household with his experimental noises and new tricks. Kyla (almost 7) started riding her bike with no training wheels. And Avery (4) constantly amazes us with her keen perception and sense of humor. We also celebrated my grandmother's 80th birthday with my entire family and we began making plans for a summer vacation! We also found out that our fourth recent wedding client in the past 2 years is pregnant! I also had the opportunity to photograph newborn twins as well as another 3-month-old baby. As I sat down to work on an album tonight, I found my mind in a different place. I'm usually good at shaking distracting thoughts when a job needs to be done, but not tonight. I'm in the mood to write. Most of the time when I think of being a photographer, I imagine all the happy moments I get to capture. I imagine the wedding portraits we create hanging on the walls of a couple's home as they celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary. I picture a mother someday glancing at newborn portraits we took of her baby that is now off at college. I love this job and I am constantly blown away at the opportunities we are entrusted with to document the most special moments of people's lives.
A new thought hit me, however, last night when I received an email from one of our 2009 clients. She had just given birth to their first baby not much more than a week ago and she was writing to tell me that her father had just passed away. I immediately knew the broad range of emotions and was whisked away to 2006 when my mother passed away two weeks before our daughter Avery was born. There are few broader spectrums of emotions that a person can experience in life, in my opinion, than to experience a birth and a death in such a short amount of time.
The new thought that hit me last night was how deeply important a job I have as a photographer. This new mom wanted to know if she could order some prints of her father from her wedding to have on display at the funeral this weekend. Of course I could arrange that, and I did. But as I worked out the details, I was struck with a sense of gratitude that perhaps something I created might serve as a source of comfort for people I've never met. Perhaps it would not have struck me this way, but this was actually our second wedding client who had recently lost a loved one whom we had photographed at their recent wedding. I hope that I don't have any more requests like this in the near future, but you'd better believe that I have a renewed perspective on the importance of our role in our clients' lives. We're capturing special moments in people's lives that will never happen again. We're creating images that will spark memories and evoke emotion quite possibly for generations to come. Maybe I'm reading into this too deeply and thank you if you've made it this far. Maybe I should be editing right now, but this is where my mind and my heart are - I just needed to get this out.
I'll leave you with one of my favorite images from our wedding. Here I am as a young kid with geeky glasses almost 10 years ago dancing with my mom. I miss her like crazy, but I'm so thankful that Russ captured this image because it is exactly how I will always remember her! 
PS - Tune in soon for some cute pictures of a baby! Everyone will need some cheering up after this post!
PPS - If you made it this far, seriously, thank you for reading. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!