Positivity Wrapped Up

Hello followers, thanks for sticking around, we have truly appreciated your support throughout the year. I cannot believe it's now 2010 and that we've managed to complete this experiment to it's fullest. I've never typed this much in my life. I can say that I was only happy with about 60% of my entries which I know is not very positive. But, I'm aware I am not a stellar writer and this brought that more to the surface for me. I prefer to write in fragments, brief thoughts, and poetic verse.

This blog has traveled with me through the start of my photography career, losing my job, nine months of unemployment, my medical assistant pursuit, to my now teaching aspirations, to my new job in day-care, to my beautiful wedding engagement. 2009 couldn't have been more life alternating for me and now I have it completely documented. I've kept up journal writing through most of my younger years and this process has been very therapeutic in that same regard. I feel I know myself better. I feel more confident in my own skin. I think this experiment effected me more deeply than Jason, just because I was writing during such life changing times. I became a stronger person when I was unemployed and got to explore all my passions. I did love and appreciate this experience. I know now that I need calming devises around me when my life gets tense and stressful. Exercise, music, films, and my favorite foods to name a few. I feel more positive, I really do. Whenever I sense Jason getting negative, I catch myself getting negative with him. I don't like when I do this and I'm glad I'm immediately aware of it, so I usually find myself stepping out of the situation and concentrating on the positive.

Top big projects that we need to stay positive about are selling the Towson House, affording all the bills including our two mortgages, getting my teaching certificate and becoming a teacher, getting the city house finished, getting my photography career moving and shaking again, and getting a wedding plans together. We have each other to get through these tough projects. We can achieve anything together.

Things I think of when times get me down: My loving mom and dad, my sister and Allen, and their wonderful growing boys, Kaiden and Blake. My grandmom, who needs positivity more than ever. My new dreams of helping and teaching children achieve and grow. Cooking delicious food with my wonderful fiance, Jason. My new loving family- Jan, David, Steph, John, Lou, Karin, Grandpa, and Jackson. And all of our other family members and friends. Starting a new garden next Spring. Starting any new project with Jason. Finishing our city home together. Being a bride walking down the aisle to my beautiful, kind, heartfelt soon to be husband, Jason.

I love you dear, we can move mountains together. I hope all your writing dreams come true. I believe in you- Stay Positive!

2010 Resolution Part 1

This blog has really made me realize that keeping yourself motivated is the only way to live a happy, energized, and satisfied life. We must continually strive to educate ourselves. Staying healthy keeps you energized to pursue life's next goals. Staying positive and having confidence in yourself keeps you motivated.

My resolution for 2010 will be to continue this attitude. I have a big interview coming up and I must stay on top of my game so that I can get into the residency program. I'm really starting to feel it's the best step I could make for myself. Lately I've been feeling my scared-protective walls forming around me. I'm losing my momentum so I must break down that wall, step up my game and start focusing on my teaching and photography careers with real passion.

I must feel good, stay focused and motivated, and be confident in myself. It's very important to keep studying, learning, and practicing. I need to stay connected with the strong and loving people in your life. Remember to like yourself and be positive. You are Captain Awesome!!

Brooke, my Motivational Speaker

I got to catch up with my friend, Brooke, today when I decided to give her a ring during the kid's nap time. It was great to finally talk to her. I knew that she was back in NY and really busy pursuing her dreams, but I didn't know all the details. So here you go: she's currently interning for Bust my favorite magazine, she is producing her own comedy shows around the city and in Jersey, she doing art shows presenting her handmade light boxes, and she's back bartending and waiting at a NYC night spot. I really admire her tenacity, she never gives up and will always be an amazingly talented, unique individual. She keeps herself super busy, which is very motivational.

Even with all the things she has going on she kept talking about what my next steps should be with my photography. I wasn't in a rut quite yet, but I could see myself getting there. But now after our talk I feel more self-confident and have new motivation to stay positive as I pursue my photography and my teaching aspirations. Brooke and I are very similar in our work ethic and dedication and I just have to remember that everyday. Miss and Love you Brooke, break a leg!

Employed Busy Bee

During unemployment I really learned how to use time wisely. I now really miss having time in the day to do housework, garden, , exercise, cook, work on photography, and the time to contemplate me next career move. Don't get me wrong I like my new job and feel it's a good fit for me, but I really want to keep my momentum up when I get home from work. I need to fit in exercise, cooking, house work and photography somehow. I really learned that making lists of daily goals really helped me, so I will continue to make those for when I get home. It's time to move on from unemployment and start my new life as an employed busy bee.

Fast Friendly Connections

I'm really starting to notice that I give off good friendly energy in even a short amount of time. I just worked my last day at GBMC and a few of the nurses said they were really going to miss me. They said I was their favorite photographer. It felt really good and it was so sweet. I gave them my card and hope to hear from them soon.

I think the thing I'll miss most from this gig is the interaction I had with adults. I'm strictly going to be conversing and playing with kids in my new job and I won't have a real adult connection to many folks, except for my co-workers. I also really enjoyed working in the hospital environment. We'll see, maybe I'll be there again one day.

I also worked with three great families today. There babies were adorable and they all gave me high reviews for my photos. Overall it was a really great last day. Another chapter in my life is about to close. Tomorrow and Sunday morning I work at St. Joe's for the final time.

Kids Full Time

Alright, so I was offered the daycare job and just got done accepting it. November 3rd I start my new journey. I'm very excited, it only took 8 months to finally find a full time job that fits exactly what I'm looking for. The director of childcare seems like such a great lady. I will continue to pursue photography and try to get as many weekend or evening gigs as I can, I'll need the extra funds. I am a full time worker once again and this time I get to play with kids all day instead of stressing out to make deadlines, Yay!!

Good Exhaustion

Work, Work, Work, it's a good thing. I'm exhausted, Renegade hired me to take photos around Baltimore City today. I literally drove in from NY this afternoon from doing the 9 hour party shoot last night and went straight to local bars and restaurants to shoot shots for Renegade. I'm exhausted and happy it's all done with. Now time to eat a meal made be my wonderful man and pass out.

Trust and Confidence

It's so sweet when someone uses one of my photos to present as their profile pic on Facebook. Both my friends Kate and Libby both did that this week. It's a true compliment. I feel I might really be becoming a good photographer, not great, but good. Which is wonderful. I love feeling confident about something and feeling that my client's can trust me to get the job done. I think I'm doing this entry to pump myself up for the party in NY tonight. Here are the pictures of Kate and Libby that they used.

Paid Adventures

People travel for work all the time and I once had to travel to different states every month for weeks at a time when I was working on Wife Swap. Tomorrow I am traveling to New Rochelle, NY for a photography gig. I'm really looking forward to it and I'm not nervous at all about it. Especially since this will be my third event I've done for this family. They are paying me good money to come to three ladies 45th Birthday Party, what an awesome gig. I will be staying with Lauren in Harlem tomorrow night, so I get to hang out with my dear friend once again and see her NY apartment. Here's to a Paid NY Adventure!

Life is Good

I've learned in the past couple of weeks that I like working in the hospital environment. Everyone is focused with helping others and every one's mostly friendly regardless of how busy they all are. It's nice to feel comfortable so fast in a new workplace. I also like working on my own and not having a boss looking over your shoulder all day or at least feeling like they are. I'm really content at the moment working part-time at as a photographer for Our365 and managing my own photography business. Content is a nice relaxing position to be in at the moment. I also finished my application for the Baltimore City Teacher Residency Program this past weekend. So all I need to do is await they're decision. No stress, no worries, feeling good.

Doors Swung Open

I'm finally starting to get paid for my hard work, or at least the pay is coming shortly in some cases. I did an awesome photo shoot today with my beautiful pregnant friend, Libby. I just got done reviewing them and I'm really proud about how a few of them came out. And she ended up paying a little over what I had asked for for the work. She is such a doll and I really wish Roger and her the best.

She also set me up with a company she works for part-time called Our365 which takes photos of newborn babies when they first arrive into this world. I went for the interview and the girl loved me immediately and said that if my background check came back clean then the job is mine, which it did, and it is. It felt so good to be appreciated for just being me. It's only every other weekend, but it's something that will get me experience and get me out of the house.

I also might start selling Arbonne cosmetics. Jasmine's mom works for them and is moving to Atlanta soon with her family and offered to give me her local clients. How amazing, how everything starts coming in all at once. I feel good about everything, a little nervous, but who wouldn't be when I'm going to be entering a few different work environments all at the same time. I used to thrive off getting a bunch of gigs at a time when I was working on films in NYC, so this is no different. It should start coming naturally to me. And yes Steph, I'm scared and excited all at once! Take that.

Shooting with Assistance

Yesterday I had a photo shoot with Jasmine, a young girl about 5 years old. Her parents want to get her into modeling and TV appearances. It was my first shoot with such a young person. Our first location did not work out. We pretty much got kicked off the Johns Hopkins Campus. Lovely experience. So we than drove over to Wyman Park, which turned out to be a great location, so I was relieved. Jasmine was hard to work with, just because she's so young and refused to smile most of the time. I still feel I pulled off some great shots though. Since I was a tad nervous, Jason agreed to come along for support and assistance. I have to say it was nice to have an assistant, since I was the one usually holding all the gear during my production assistant days. Keeping tabs on all your belongings can be difficult when your trying to catch all the perfect picture moments, especially when children are so unpredictable. It was a great learning experience and it was great having Jason there, Thanks again sweetie!

Blossoming Photographer

As you already know my photography website has been launched and I'm getting great feedback from my friends and family. Jason did a wonderful job and I thank him for all his hard work.

We also worked together last night to get a new Ad posted on craigslist. It will hopefully get people checking out my website and new paid gigs will start flowing in. I'm excited to finally start getting paid for my craft, not to say that the unpaid gigs were not great learning experiences. I've gotten website comments like "looks very professional" and "your photos are amazing and different," which make me feel really good. Maybe I can do this, maybe I can be a professional photographer.

I would still like to enhance my skills in the childcare world, start getting my 90 hrs towards a certification.

I can only hope that my confidence continues to blossom and that people continue to dig my work.

Check me out at: luminuouseyephoto.com and my ad at http://baltimore.craigslist.org/evs/1330425475.html

Bloody Good Morning

That was Kate's joke, but I'm stealing it. Kate makes a mean Bloody Mary, one of which I'm enjoying as I write this entry. Lazy Saturdays, sans rain, plus sunshine, plus Bloody Mary mix multiplied by good company, a farmer's market and a list of things to keep us productive results in an uplifted mood and a happy morning. And it's bleeding into a nice afternoon.

And what's shaping up to be a perfect, productive weekend. Kate's almost done going through all of her recent photographs, at which point we're going to put together her online portfolio, buy a URL and start her advertising. Plus Sunday she has a gig shooting outdoor portrait shots of some person's young daughter for headshot use. I've got two companies lined up that want web design work and advertising. All I have to do is get them out a price quote. Sunday we're hopefully doing brunch with some friends at Miss Shirleys. Then we're going to install some extra air-conditioning units.

Lots of good stuff to fill up an otherwise blissfully blank weekend. You can't see it, but I'm raising my red plastic cup and toasting all of you. Or rather I would be, if I were. But it's the sentiment that counts. Have a great weekend.

New Horizons Approaching

Okay I'm finally getting excited enough about my new career proposal to talk about it in my blog. I want to teach Elementary Education. I'm going to apply to two different fast track programs, but they won't be starting up for a while. I keep imagining myself in front of a bunch of 2nd graders and it's making me nervous and excited at the same time. I have a lot of teacher contacts including Jason's mom who will be able to help me through the process. I've been applying for daycare type jobs for extra experience and even though I don't have any background other than babysitting I got a response today from one of the ads. It doesn't make me feel very nervous to talk to them further, but more excited and happy to be doing something I feel good about. I going to continue doing freelance photography gigs, since that also makes me happy. Give me luck everyone. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but right now I feel it will all by worth it.

Photo Sharing

Online photo sharing is one of those novelties of modern life I think many of us take for granted. I was just going through pictures from my brother-in-law John's recent trip to Holland and Italy (there are some great shots there, John, by the way) and it got me thinking about my picture taking experiences in Europe back in 2001. I was on the continent for three and a half weeks, starting in Copenhagen, Denmark, making stops in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, and Seville, ending finally in Grenada, Spain, taking the continent from top to bottom.

Needless to say I took a ton of pictures. I thought. By my standards of the day, using an old film-based SLR. I probably shot 16 or 17 rolls of film, which was all I could afford. At 24 exposures per roll I guess I shot somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pictures. A gargantuan amount for me at the time, pitiful by digital standards. For comparison, Kate and I recently spent a week in Sedona, Arizona, and we easily shot five times as many pictures in less than a third of the time.

But at the time 400 pictures was a lot. There was the initial film costs to consider and then the developing, which, for 400 pictures was a lot more than I wanted to spend. I bought a couple physical albums as well, and spent days organizing my prints, placing and labeling them in the albums to save from forgetting names and places. That way I'd both have the photos for years and would be able to easily (again, easy by the standards of the day) share my photos with friends and family.

What a lengthy, arduous process! Which is why I say that online photo sharing is a real boon to shutterbugs everywhere. The difference in process is like night and day, and it's fascinating how, in probably less than five or six years, photography has radically shifted.

Now Kate and I, and the rest of the free world, take thousands of free pictures with our digital cameras, no developing required, and with a few simple keystrokes upload them so that everyone we know can see them, share them with other friends, and get prints made for themselves if they wanted. Imagine what I would have had to do eight years ago to get a print made for a friend: Take my albums to them, let them pick out the image they wanted, find the negatives, take them to a photo shop, get the print made, pick it up, and then either mail it or hand deliver the final image. Lots of steps. Lots of time. Needless to say I'm the only one that has copies of my Europe pictures.

But already multiple people have images from our Arizona trip. Most were gifts from us, but one or two ordered them from our online share site. I think that's so cool. Even the gift prints were easier to procure than they've ever been. Log on, pick the shots, order the sizes. Done. What's great about digital photography is the magic of waste. With nearly limitless potential for free shots, you can snap away with abandon. The more pictures you take, the more likely you'll wind up with some really nice shots, some of which you might not have taken if you were rationing film-based pictures, like I did in Europe. And then, unlike with film, at least consumer film, you can "develop" only the images you really want, instead of the entire roll.

And then share them as far and as wide as possible. There can never be too much good photography in the world.

Beauty Surfacing

I worked my butt off yesterday finishing up LaTusha's wedding photographs. I've been enhancing all the best ones using Photoshop and Jason has been teaching me new techniques everyday. He recommended I turn one black and white and I proceeded to provide a few others in black and white using a few different methods. When I was finished I had to show Jason all the ones I worked on and he was so impressed with my work. It felt great to feel like I've finally accomplished creating something beautiful. This was my first solo gig and I really feel these photos were my best to date. I hope LaTusha and Carlton feel the same way once they review them.


I would love to get some positive feedback on my actual photographs verses getting positive feedback on my work ethic and personality. Not to say that getting those positive remarks isn't great, but actually hearing that the product I'm delivering is exactly what they were hoping for would be even better.

Giving and Helping

This will have to be a short one, since my motivation this week to get actual work done has been scarce and I would really like to accomplish something today.

I really want to help people and give to people for a living. I don't want to continue working in an industry that creates commercials or documentaries that entertain, but don't really contribute to society. I know I once worked around movie stars and that was exciting, but I feel that chapter in my life is finished. I want to either pursue my photography career or go into the medical field. I'm really giving to people with my photography and it feels good. I'm capturing memories for these folks so they have their best moments with them forever. Give me luck as I pursue my next dream of giving and helping mankind.

Photography Tips

I like when you find useful tips on other blogs. I found some great group shot tips for tonight's wedding, so I feel more confident now. One was to keep the camera in continuous shot mode, this way you can take many shots at one time and your bet that one of those will have all eyes open is much greater. Another good one was befriending a guest that knows all the different family members and ask them to assist you during the group shots, this way they can help you make sure all the correct people are in the shots. Smile, you need to be constantly smiling. Keep the mood positive and don't show you are stressed or bothered in any way. Posing the groups by height is important. Tall people in the back shorter people on the sides and the front. Pose the parties around the Bride and Groom. Do shots with everyone looking at the camera and some with them looking at the Bride and Groom. I must remember to stay in control, one way to do this is by communicating to everyone. When people are not being cooperative tell them that the bride and groom has requested I get shoots of everyone. Giving them a reason is sometimes all it takes.

Okay, this entry was mostly about pumping me up for my first solo shoot today. Give me luck everyone!

Nigerian Traditions

I shot my 2nd wedding yesterday. The groom's family was Nigerian and I've learned that the traditional wardrobe is absolutely beautiful. The woman and men wear colorful gowns and the women wear these amazing fabric headdresses. All the outfits are unique. A lot of times the wife and husband would wear similar patterns. Here are two pics from the reception to give you an idea.


They also all seem to be tremendous dancers. They all share such an amazing dedication to their families and traditions, and it was great a witness such kinship. They also have this cool tradition of putting money on the bride and groom while they dance. Everyone was so generous. Their culture is so fascinating, I can't wait for my next wedding so I can be witness to more beautiful traditions.