Time.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” — Douglas Adams

Why did you set out on your photography journey?  I can almost guarantee that many of our stories start the same. We have babies.  We want pictures.  This is as true for me as it is for anyone else, plus my parents also loved taking photographs.  I have always had a camera, even as a little girl and I have always been artistic, creative, crafty.  I have always dreamed of being a mother and a teacher.  I bailed on the teaching dream half way through college and found my way down a few career paths and ended up in the very convenient, very flexible, not so rewarding waitressing world.  Then I became pregnant with Alex.

End of 2006
We were babies having a baby.

…and now I’m going to get really brutally honest and candid with you for a moment…
I was not a photographer.  I was not a momtog, either.  I was a mom with a camera who knew how to push a button.  I even learned how to run some filters or whatever the heck I did to the photo from Rockefeller Center at Christmas.   Up the nose shots, red eyes, and Christmas lights! *gasp*  {do not let your kids play with Christmas lights, they contain lead}.

Summer 2007

These silly toes.  They take my breath away.  Every single one of my kids has them and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

End of 2007

These photos were good enough to document my baby, sure, but they weren’t good ENOUGH.  I wanted to remember my baby as he was, as I saw him and these photos just weren’t getting the job done.  Yes, sure, I love looking back at them and remembering these times.  Remembering the time when I had the flash and the red eye reduction on so the poor kid would get bug eyes in every photo because of the double flash. Hey, at least they weren’t red bug eyes, right?!

Up until this point, I had gradually started taking more and more photos of this little nugget.  I was getting more and more excited about it but was limited by equipment and knowledge. Time was passing and life was changing and I was getting desperate to hold on to memories.

Mid 2008

August 25, 2008
We were still babies… well, my husband was.  I was nearly 30 haha! and we had another baby.  My mom gifted me her Canon Rebel.  YAY!  All of a sudden, with the birth of our second baby, it felt like things started moving in warp speed.  My babies aged months in just moments, right before my eyes.  I couldn’t grasp the fleeting moments fast enough to hold on to them before they were gone, left behind on the freeway of life as we continued zooming forward.

I was still just a mom with a camera who knew how to push a button, but I was slowly learning and I began to shoot in AV at some point in the months to follow.

OMG… this happened… seriously…. what was I thinking?  I’ll warn you now, it doesn’t get better over time 😉

Crooked photos.. why was that ever a thing?!

In the spirit of coming clean, here are a few more photos from random times in 2008.  Tell me again about why selective color was a thing… anyone?

I was improving… I guess… but I wasn’t there yet.  I continued practicing and improving for the next couple of years.

Then a series of unfortunate events halted my life.  Literally stopped me in my tracks and I didn’t take my camera out for years.   I have 2011 and 2012 folders on my hard drive that are empty except for 2 photos in each.  I did have phone pics but when my hard drive got damaged, I lost all of those.  I only just realized this right now.  *sob*

As life started to come together again and we conceived our third child, I slowly started using my camera again.  I have since committed so much time and energy, I even upgraded to a 6D and a 35mm art.  The only thing that hasn’t changed is time.  In the years between 2008 and 2013, seemingly overnight, something happened.

This :

Became this:

And by 2016 all of this:

And so… maybe I’m at the point where I can call myself a photographer, maybe I have years and years of learning ahead.  Maybe both.  My goal of making photos that really capture who these little people are has been reached and will continue to improve for as long as I’m able.   So, I’m holding tight to these memories, because one day they will be all I have left of these exhausted days and I will yearn to be crawling through the sand on Long Beach Island, begging my kids to cooperate for just one more second.   Not everyone can be a photographer, but everyone can be a memory keeper.  My kids are my inspiration in helping others keep their memories, too.  I know what it’s like to have photos and to not have photos and no one should look back on nothing.

xoxo,
Katie
mama, memory keeper, photographer

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