Sep
02
2010Three Thanksgiving’s ago we were invited to “the farm”. A sweet lady named Carol and her husband Larry at our church host Thanksgiving and Easter meals for anyone who doesn’t have family in town. The numbers range from 50-100 each holiday.
There’s such beauty at the farm.
Children cuddling ever present kittens (and me too)
Music and songs.
Tasty Food.
I had to capture all that beauty and all those relationships and all that laughter and joy.
So I brought my camera. After Easter I decided those captures needed to be shared. How could I keep all that joy to myself? So I made Carol and Larry a little photo book of Resurrection Day 2010.
The captured joy was treasured so much that when Larry and Carol’s 31 children and grandchildren held a week long family reunion they asked me to photograph their families. It was a whirl wind evening of taking photos of 8 different family groups and a giant group photo. I can’t begin to express how much personality those families had 🙂
A couple weeks later I was talking to my friend Tamara about how much fun I had taking pictures at the farm. Over the course of the conversation I asked if I could take photos of the little bundle of joy she was expecting in a couple weeks time. Delighted, Tamara agreed.
I posted a few of these images on Facebook for Tamara and within mere hours an acquaintance asked how much I charged for my services. Suddenly, Quiet Graces Photography was born.
So what have I learned? Well, a good God requires obedience. He wants me to do what he asks because He knows what’s best for me. He sent me to North Greenville to major in Outdoor Leadership (a field I didn’t know existed!) in order to grow me into someone more like His Son. I could have gone to a different school and become a better photographer, but that didn’t have eternal significance.
Yet in obedience, joy is found. Our wild and good God loves giving wonderful unexpected gifts to His children. In following Him and learning more about Him, I learn to appreciate these gifts more and to see His hand in everything.
I’m excited to see where this wild path in photography takes me.
Sep
01
2010I remember my first camera. It was 3rd grade and I had a broken arm. I took pictures of my sister taking pictures of me. The rest of that roll of film contains creative images of tissue paper flowers that my parents bought us in Carowinds.
A few years later, I received a Kodak Advantix camera. I remember taking black and white pictures of an opossum caught in our trash can and a street flooded to the bottom of a mailbox after a hurricane.
I couldn’t stop pressing down the shutter.
Around my Sophomore year in high school, I received the best present yet: a fully manual film camera. I was giddy with excitement! I took tons of photos and checked out every book in the library on cameras.
Winter of my junior year, the camera was stolen from my driveway. I can still see images recorded on that lost roll of film: Seth Thomas at 14 months playing with the stuffed football and Olivia, Sam, and Hannah bouncing on a trampoline. I was devastated. More for the lost film than the camera. My sweet sweet sister replaced my camera for my 17th birthday. I could have cried with joy.
That spring I blundered into the darkroom at my high school. I spilled chemicals everywhere, but I learned to process film. I even managed to learn oil hand-coloring of my images. Senior year I spent an entire 90 minutes every day alone in the darkroom listening to Jars of Clay. It was a small piece of heaven. I looked at two schools for photography: one in Atlanta and one in Chicago. I wanted to capture images for the rest of my life.
But God intervened.
A full scholarship to a school in state prompted me to stay. I knew God was calling me to attend North Greenville, but they only had two courses in Photography. Photo I and Photo II. I gave up the dream in obedience. I entered NGU as an Early Education Major; I left with a Degree in Outdoor Leadership and a sweet husband named Derek.
Four years of marriage and twin babies later, I had almost forgotten the dream.
But God had not.
