I’m soaking in the sunset and the quiet for a little while before I go back down and join the party, breathing because if I don’t – well, I guess I won’t be alive anymore.

I’ve been scared out of my mind today, uncertain, vulnerable – and I’ve been alive the whole time. I’ve been able to smile, to talk, to cry, to FEEL, and these are good things, even if the “go” itself is wigging me out. I don’t know what day it is, don’t know what time it is. I’m carrying a map of the hotel around with me and getting lost anyway because oh-by-the-way I really can’t read maps – but it’s okay.

I had french fries for lunch – with no guilt because Pete is 8 hours away from the potato threat (which I will probably have to explain for those of you who don’t already know that he is anaphylactically allergic to potatoes). I’ve learned that I can translate avatars across into real life, and that it’s okay to be new and to reach out anyway.

Today wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I think it might be more. I don’t know. I think there will be a lot of processing for me, and a lot of living without overthinking it too. I’ve been begging God for practice in listening to others and reaching outside myself, and ohmywordamIgoingtogetpractice. There are some incredible people here, people I’ve been wanting to meet, and people I didn’t even know existed before I talked with them this afternoon.

Have I ever mentioned that I love people? I love how conversations can spin out of control and go anywhere, and all of a sudden, you discover you’re not alone anymore. It’s a little like life, if you live it with your eyes open. I’m finally starting to be really excited about this conference.

Okay. Must needs fix my makeup and go buy a bag to carry stuff in that doesn’t weigh a ton. YEEP. I need some serious conference packing lessons…

We’re retooling PhotoPlay at The High Calling, and I am having a ball. Marcus Goodyear suggested that we make it “Kelly’s PhotoPlay,” in which I would submit a photo essay about a topic and invite others to participate/respond with their own essay, poem, single photo, or collage. I am planning topics around my photo opps this year, and I’m particularly excited about my topic for our March PhotoPlay:

As I have been looking closely at my wedding packages and focusing my sessions around a particular story, I’ve begun paying closer attention to the images I need to produce in order to describe my subject. As a fine art photographer, every single image I produce has my personal touch on it, from the original vision to the final release. I am learning to plan my shoots ahead of time with a few key shots around which to build the story, and keep my eyes open between poses for the reality that completes it.

At 6:30 or so on Thursday morning, I am flying out to Tennessee (by way of HOUSTON, TX????!?!) for the BlissDom ’12 Conference – and I am taking my camera. In keeping with the March PhotoPlay prompt, I’ll be looking for 10-15 shots that will capture:

• the event location
• key event figures
• event attendees
• overall feel of the event
• focal details
• flow of the event (beginning, middle, end)

Each of these items contribute to a complete photo story, and they apply to the coverage of any event, from a child’s birthday party to a full-fledged political event or business conference. If you want to play along, we’ll be offering a linky for you to join us at The High Calling. Take your camera – or your open eyes – with you when you go (even to choir practice, okay?!), and share an event in photos, in a video, in a collage, even in a post or a poem.

P.S. Just so you know, I am expecting to see the following events link up when we go live in March. ;-)

• “The Birds Have a Feeder Celebration” from Susan
• “We Baked His Bread” from Ann
• “All Art Friday” from Joy
• “The Big Game” from Deb
• “They All Showed Up” - A poetry event from Maureen
• “A Twitter Party – in Red” from L.L. Barkat
• “Speaking of Speaking: A Conversation with God” from Lyla

The first burn-out indicator should have been the internal ticker-tape that hit after every work-related interaction with a real person. Somebody turned the volume WAY up on that thing. But I yelled back internally and kept going. The second indicator would have been my increasing obsession with perfection in my photos – three days on one photo, comparing it to… WHAT? The third indicator was the growing frustration with people who made me feel like I had to do what they like in order to be successful. There were more, but I didn’t notice them. I thought I could just keep going. Push past them. Go, go, go.

But believing in yourself when you feel no one else does (no matter what they are saying) exacts a price. It is hard to lay yourself out, investing time and energy in potential clients and waiting for contracts to come in while the ticker-tape plays and replays how you shoulda/coulda/woulda done things differently if…

I don’t like being that real, that human, that vulnerable.

On Saturday morning, I got up determined to finish a project for a favorite client, sat down at my computer, and froze. My brain was paralyzed. I couldn’t think in a straight line. As the apathy set in, I realized what was happening.

I was burning out.

My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are life to those who find them,
And health to all their flesh.
Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.

- Prov. 4:20-23

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

- Phil 4:6-7

I spent Saturday on my couch. I barely touched the computer all weekend. I didn’t think about good pictures – didn’t think about pictures at all. I let go of the things – people, clients – over which I have no control. And I made a few decisions for going forward, things to cut, things to try again.

Sometimes to keep going, you have to stop.

You have to let yourself be THAT vulnerable. You have to let beauty be beauty and let you not be the one creating it, envying it, or pursuing it. And at least once a day, you have to breathe and give your heart a chance to be alive. Because too much “go” has too many consequences.

“And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?.”

- Mary Oliver

Sarah picked this week’s prompt, and I think the three of us quite fell in love with it, looking at the photos we’ve done. The quote is an open invitation, and isn’t that what beauty is too?

I have no words for this photo. It was a complete surprise, and a surprise that I needed, at that. It was nothing I intended – I was just messing with my exposure and aperture. Funny how beauty does that, invites us up out of ourselves when we least expect it.

It reminds us who we are, and why we bother opening our eyes to look for it at all. It keeps us alive – to the whole world, I think. I love getting to play around with beauty so much. It never really grows old.

Our prompt at Three this round is based on the quote I’ve shared above. Do you have a photo or a story to share about that? Join the fun with Claire and Sarah and me, won’t you? We’d love to have you!

I am beginning to think that every brand or business – or public figure – must have started out intending to be authentic. But more and more, I am realizing that as a brand or a business or a person grows, its public face takes on a “personhood” of its own. Authenticity isn’t welcome if it conflicts with an original vision. People crave reality – but they also demand consistency, and the strongest brands develop within a framework of familiarity.

Focusing my brand has been the hardest, hardest thing I have ever attempted. On the one hand, I’ve never really tried to sit down and uncover the things that make me up, and learning about my favorite colors, the clothes I like to wear, the seasons I like, the kind of person I am has been incredible. I know more ABOUT me than I have ever known before. I know my strengths, and I know many of my weaknesses. I know my likes and my dislikes; I know what I want and what I don’t want.

But one of the things I have learned about myself has made creating a framework for “me” a very difficult task.

As an artist, I express myself in different ways. I take pictures, yes, but I also sing and play the piano, write stories, write poetry. I write words in my journal, make lists, scribble. Sometimes I even choreograph music. I love spinning and swinging, feeling the air move past my face, letting the wind play in my hair. Sometimes I get the feeling that I AM art, begging to be released.

There has to be room in my brand for me to grow and change and express myself in as many different, crazy ways as I want. And until one day last week, I’ve been totally stumped as to how that is possible.

Last week, I realized that every single artistic outlet of mine involves certain colors. I see the same colors when I play the piano that I see when I write a poem or a paragraph. When I take pictures, regardless of how they come out in the RAW, I see the same colors I see when I sing and my voice takes on a life of its own. When I nail an edit on a photo in post-processing, it comes out in the same colors I see when I spin or when I swing and close my eyes.

Somebody hit on it a couple days ago with a comment on an instagram photo I shared.

“Kelly colors!” he said.

The comment floored me. The thing that sets me apart from everyone else – the thing that I FEEL sets me apart from everyone else – is my colors. Nobody else sees them the way I see them. Nobody else is going to see me the way I see myself.

These colors in my head, they are my voice. They are the heart behind my work. They are the “words” I speak without speaking, the reason I learn by connotation and intuition instead of by step-repetition.

I’ve been spending hours examining my work, looking at each individual image and examining how I bring my colors to those images. I’ve been looking at how I express myself in writing, pulling out the real and editing out the perfunctory. I’ve been singing along and listening for my colors as the music plays. Every image is its own image. I don’t have the consistent look to each image that some photographers have, but all of my images should add up to a more complete expression of myself.

I think if my “framework” – the sum of my images, design, communication, and presentation – is created using my colors, I will have a strong, solid brand that I can take with me, even as I grow. I’ve gained the skills and tools required to build that brand; now I need to let my intuition take the lead. I think if I do, my work will no longer be a mere copy of “the greats.” It will be my own, authentic through and through.

What do you think? How do you see the biggest, strongest brands growing within their core framework? Am I onto something, or am I just talking?

I have this Ingrid Michaelson song stuck in my head. I personally think it’s one of the. most. romantic. songs I have ever heard. It is so much about life and hope and simply BEING that it makes me want to laugh and cry and sing and dance all at the same time.

None of which I might actually do. But I’d want to. And THAT is what this post is about.

I woke at 3:00 a.m. to the sound of his even breathing. The previous nine months flooded my consciousness, our conversation two days before, the late night before our wedding, the sound of my own forced laughter on our wedding day.

The lights were all out – the lights had gone out. I couldn’t breathe when they danced; I couldn’t breathe now.

Suddenly, I was sobbing, great gasping sobs that came without tears. He woke, held me, absorbed the pieces of me that fell out with the final, crushing disappointment of my romantic dreams.

Screw myth and beauty and hope. This was reality, and practicality always wins.

We got married because we knew we loved one another. Because we didn’t want to continue saying goodnight every evening and turning off the conversation. Because every single person in our lives expected us to get married sooner or later. Because until we were married, every single person in our lives felt they had a say in how we should be living them.

It’s easy from the outside to see if two people should be together, but nobody on the outside knows what is happening internally.

Pete and I nearly met when our mutual friend tried to set us up on a blind date months before we actually met and became friends. We talked about God the same way, enjoyed the same activities, carried the same passion around. We were inseparable.

But when we got married, we were not yet ready to become one. The feelings I had for Pete were very new after six years of loving – really loving – someone else. I needed time to talk about them, to figure out what was happening in me. I needed more than what I already knew, what I’d known since the first time we’d really talked – that I could marry this guy. I needed to know that I loved him with all of my heart. That I wanted him – and didn’t just want not to lose him. I needed to know that it was truly possible to love again after having loved so deeply once.

Being married nearly destroyed our relationship. Pete didn’t know that I didn’t know how I felt or how my feelings turned. By the time we reached our wedding day, I only felt ready to be engaged.

Everyone came to our wedding. Everyone except half the people we had to invite. We had to plan our wedding for 200 people, and we couldn’t count on RSVPs. We went to the highways and byways to fill out the seats.

One of my vendors punted on our contract, citing increased prices because of Hurricane Katrina (yes, we got married THAT year), so I was short on several decorations. The wedding bouquet I’d ordered from the same vendor was… well, let’s just say the $320 bouquet became our toss bouquet, and I stayed late at the venue the night before our wedding putting together my own flowers.

We blew a circuit at our stable venue with the Christmas lights they had hung, and with the hay dust in the air, we ended our reception with the feeling of an old time hoedown – complete with an asthma attack on the part of the bride.

Everyone said it was beautiful, but I don’t remember.

There are things in life that are more important than having a perfect wedding, or all of the romantic dreams most girls grow up building. There are things that are more important than having matching wedding rings, than having the song you’ve always wanted playing as you walk down the aisle. There are things that mean the world to people that have nothing to do with romance and everything to do with life itself, things like friendship, and love that grows deeper with every passing year, love that is only strengthened as it survives the challenges that come up against it.

My great aunt and uncle came to my wedding. My favorite great-uncle came too, with his wife. My favorite uncle was there with his girlfriend. Most of the people who came to our wedding celebrated for us, and after an intense 9-month-engagement period, that was worth more than I can ever say. Ever.

I wore my grandmother’s diamond on my wedding day. I talked my dad into dancing with me – okay, I dragged him out onto the dance floor. My mother-in-law gave me the clearest, most beautiful memory I have from that day as she leaned into the room where I was waiting to walk the aisle and told me how much she loved me and how beautiful she thought I was.

But when I woke at 3:00 a.m., all I could think was that I had just had my only wedding, and it was nothing I had ever imagined it would be.

He told me a few weeks ago that it was something beautiful that I hadn’t gotten to experience. That he wanted me to experience it, a wedding day built around two people totally in love with one another, me real in it, him truly knowing my heart, nothing held back.

We’ve been talking about it for a while. We’d even attempted something like it at our six-month anniversary, but we’ve both known our reasons for doing it weren’t that great. We joke that we got married to live together and see if we could stay married.

He’s teasing about a proposal with a real ring instead of a key ring. I’m looking at dresses and thinking about what I’d want for a wedding, practicality aside.

And I’m thinking a lot about how I love my guy, what it is inside me that made me know I could be with him for the rest of my life, what it is about him that turns my head and my heart toward him every single day. Because what I wanted most at my wedding – or what I want at a re-wedding – is to be wholly in love with him, and not to have to justify it, not to myself, not to anyone.

I don’t regret marrying Pete when I did, but I’d like a party. I’d like to be the girl in the white dress again, without the pressure, without the defeat I carried into my first wedding day. I want to have a wedding with a dream for a future I can taste and share with everyone in my life, something in the light, and pictures to hold the memories I can’t.

I want to dance the day away, want to talk with all our guests, want to smile and laugh for real, and I want to be unselfconscious and beautiful because I did nothing wrong in falling in love again and building a life with the man of my dreams.

And I’ll tell you what – I’ll play this song at my re-wedding, and cross my fingers for the next big thing: getting rich, buying two retirement homes in the South of France, getting sweaters, teaching everybody we know how to dance through this thing called life, and building a house on a mountain, way up there.

Because I’m learning that living good is more about having the dream than making it come true. Whether my re-wedding becomes a reality or remains a dream, it’s given me a place to start again on my romance, practicality be hanged. There is nothing practical about love, and it’s only the fools who figure that out and make it part of their reality that still blush at one another after sixty years.

“I knew that I shouldn’€™t have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.”

- Michael Chabon

“You do know that GO is not my favorite concept, right?” I vented to Pete as we discussed – again – the balance between building a business and keeping room for my heart. I didn’t continue beyond my outburst, but I was thinking how much I hate not being able to undo things I’ve done. How much I dislike moving forward with out a sure thing. How much I fear. making. mistakes.

I’ve never been one to gloss over regret. I can’t change what is (or what was) by editing my memories or planning things out perfectly. If I make a mistake, I live with it for the rest of my life. This awareness of my own power to create regret has made me a fence-sitter for years. I don’t want to decide one way or the other for fear of rocking anybody’s boat, spending money I shouldn’t spend, or creating a life that isn’t okay to live.

But “go” involves getting off the fence. It involves making choices – and making mistakes. And while it doesn’t mean walking all over everyone and everything, it does mean embracing those mistakes and those regrets as part of who I am.

It means that the “s” in the Canon 1Ds Mk III is actually necessary for getting the right camera. It means that choosing the lower risk and buying the used camera turned out to be a good decision, especially when it means that I bought the wrong camera.

It also means that I am choosing to laugh at myself over my mistake and I am glad to have a Very Good Backup Camera, instead of the Nikon D-200 I’ve been using.

If “go” creates regrets, it must also enable redemption.

My year of “go” is also turning out to be a year of “grace,” because going and not staying means I’m going to make some messes. But that’s the point of grace, I think. Not having to do everything Just Right. Being free to choose life without fear of recrimination. Leaving regret with the One who promises to lead His people when they don’t know where they’re going, the One who makes the crooked paths straight.

P.S. Speaking of equipment, I am planning to sell a few pieces that I am not using enough to justify keeping. Please email me if you’re interested in purchasing any of the items I’ve listed below.

1.) Nikon D70 Digital Camera w/ Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED IF AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens – $350
Good, deep color, and great for natural light work and learning exposure. I recommend for a beginner who wants to bust their chops on something that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

2.) Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED IF AF-S DX VR [Vibration Reduction] Nikkor Zoom Lens – $225
I love this lens, but because I’ve been shooting from home most of the time I’ve owned it, it has seen very little use. It gets a beautiful bokeh on the zoom, and I’ve occasionally used it to create stunning “macro” images.

3.) Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras – $275
In terrific condition; has seen very little use.

I’ve processed and re-processed and I almost have it, the feeling of real in some photos I love – but I can’t make sense of the voices inside me.

“Too much work without rest;” the caution comes through and now I remember to breathe. To sit for ten minutes in the sun and do nothing but be in it. To ask to be held; to rest in the arms of my husband and watch the silvery February light sail past our windows on a late afternoon.

To live from your heart, you must keep room for your heart in your life.

Sometimes I look at God and wonder what He wants from me, when He’s already made me holy in Christ. There must be a catch; I want to look over my shoulder as I go, but I’ve realized rather suddenly that I have come too far to turn back now, that redemption for my past lies in my future, in my unseen hope that Jesus really did pay it all.

My heart needs the dreams, not just their fulfillment. I didn’t know this before I realized a few of my dreams. I didn’t know how I needed something to hope for, something more than attainable goals to keep me moving forward into my life.

When the mailman came to the door with my new grown-up camera, I knew I wasn’t yet ready to touch it. I shook for an hour after making the order, knowing I’d just gone too far to turn back. I made tea, put on a sweater, tried hard not to think about the fact that I’m officially off the fence, for real and for certain. But real doesn’t feel so close as I’d like to to feel when I’m living a dream that I thought would never come true. I needed some time to process the change.

Processing keeps me aware of how far I have come and how far I can go, redeeming lost details, revealing promise.

Some days, I wonder if all of life is really a processing, if artists don’t know what they are painting until they are done, if writers don’t know their own lives until they write them down. Will I always rediscover what I lived behind the camera as I color exposures and shed light on the love stories?

God knows about processing, about the way time exposes the important things, how we with eternal souls can’t really encapsulate our lives the way we think we can. He’s the only one deep enough to give us more than we can imagine. I think He gets a kick out of that.

Yet this is how He stays us when real isn’t real and dreams aren’t what we thought they would be, holding out more than our goals and our accomplishments, and letting our future rest in the work that He’s done.

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)

Few things in life ever go exactly as planned. Everybody knows the inconvenience of reorganized schedules and the frustration of unfulfilled dreams. It is sometimes hard to believe that God is more than a master puppeteer, making us dance on His whim.

But I am beginning to see that God’s step direction isn’t capricious at all. It is necessary, and it is redemptive…

We’re testing out a new format for Photoplay at The High Calling this year, a photo essay offering room for others to respond with their own photo essay, blog post, poem, or photo. Want to read more about my shoot last weekend? Click over to THC to read how God used Saturday’s editorial shoot to change my heart about His directive approach.

P.S. I’m still plugging away HARD on this shoot. I spent most of yesterday in Photoshop, working with color and depth to try to bring a film feel to these.

My goal is to create a set of presets or actions that will adjust for color, exposure, and contrast. It’s a HUGE change in my processing approach, but it’s high time I really put my focus to it. I’m excited about the results I got yesterday, and I’m way praying it will be worth the effort. You know. If I can stop myself from going cross-eyed.

My blog has always been a bit of a personal journal for me to write the stuff that I don’t always get to talk about. Since I’m running a business largely by myself, this “journal” has seen a lot of business chatter over the last year or so. But after yesterday’s publication post and my repeated Facebook and Twitter posts about my publication at Grey Likes Weddings, I began to wonder if I’m writing in a – loud – monotone.

We started the business to create opportunities for me to shoot beautiful things – but that is not all I am. I worry that I’m trying to be a grown-up photographer and business professional when really, I’m just a person who sees.

I see things I don’t photograph, the sounds of my kids giggling as they chase one another down the hall, the nuclear waste they leave for Pete and me to clean up every evening, meals we make together, friends who come to visit. I don’t photograph family phone calls or bedtime stories or nights on the couch watching Bones or The Bachelor or The Office. I don’t take pictures of God-conversations, two-year-old tantrums, or four-year-old funnies.

These things that make up my life are the best things about me, the things that keep my eyes open so that I see beyond my viewfinder, so that I still live real life behind my lens. My camera is only the tool – my work begins long before I pick it up.

Regardless of my business success, I’m not going to feel successful unless I have been able to live real in achieving that success. I need to be a person more than I need to be a professional. I need to keep seeing more than I need to have single-minded focus.

And I need to change the subject once in a while. It makes picking up the camera so much more fun.