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Lincoln Gap Photography: Vermont Photographer Specializing in Family, Maternity, Newborn and Couples Lifestyle Photography. Vermont Photographer serving Warren, Waitsfield, Fayston, Moretown, Middlesex, Montpelier, Barre, Berlin, Middlebury, Waterbury, and beyond.
I feel the need to write a post about WHY I became a photographer. In every photography class I have taken so far, the instructor has posed a question: What is your WHY? Because if as a photographer you can answer this question, everything else will fall into place. Its something I try to go back to on a weekly basis, especially as I am pretty new in my creative journey. Finding my "why" will answer questions such as "Who are my clients?", and "What kinds of images do I want to produce?". After a lot of soul searching, here is my "why":
I have hardly any images of me with my children. I'm almost always the one behind the camera. And there are even less with me and our second baby.
And even less, I have hardly any images where I like how I look. And I'm not talking about I don't like how my body looked after I gave birth, or even how my hair looks. I'm talking about EMOTION. When I look at my family's images, I want to re-live how I felt in that moment. Me sitting there holding the baby kind of half smiling just doesn't do it for me. The only images I have where I am really feeling the moment are images of my second child's birth.
They are raw, pure, in the moment. And even though when I look through them I feel bouts of terror, anxiety, and confusion, I feel something.
So this is my "why": I do photography because I want to be there for families. I want to create beautiful, timeless, emotive images that when they look through their photobook, or walk down their hallway past that awesome wall collage I created for them, they feel. Maybe they feel love. Maybe they feel comfort, contentment, or joy. Or maybe they feel anguish, grief, or sadness, if a loved one has passed away or the reason for photography is not pleasant but needed to be documented. I'm not here just to photograph the good, I'm here for the bad too. I want to be there for moms, moms to be, and women who want to be moms so bad but it isn't in the cards. I'm a mom, and I know how freaking hard this job is. I've been right in the thick of it for the past 6, almost 7 years, and let me tell you, motherhood deserves to be cherished, it deserves to be set up like some kind of shrine, because holy heck, some days you need to set back and remind yourself of the lovely, smells like roses kind of days where your children have become angels by miracle of God. All jokes aside, parenthood is tough, and its a special treat to be able to be in the images with your children. I had a maternity session when I was pregnant with each of my girls, and I love providing expecting families with images of this special time. I want to be there for couples, for the small businesses in Vermont who are looking for images that tell the story of their brand.
So that's my "why". I think its a pretty good reason to be a photographer, don't you?