borrowed sentiments

One of my very favorite bloggers is Ashley Ann over at Under the Sycamore.  She is a fantastic mom and crafter and photographer.  I love her heart of generosity and her laid back outlook on life.

A couple of days ago, she wrote a post that I just loved.  It's about her love for photography, and it echoes my sentiments.  You can read the whole thing over here, but I am copying and pasting my favorite part below:

The joy of photography for me is in the “click”.  A moment frozen, remembered, cherished. I don’t just “click” on the picture perfect moments. In fact, many of my favorite images are from an attempt to see the beauty in something that appears very mundane. Photography has been a gift. Photography is a gift.

I print pictures. I make books. I blog photos. But, even in all the sharing and saving…the joy is in the taking the picture. I have hard drives and disks full of little moments, little details…beauty in the mundane. Maybe I’ll use them one day. Maybe the kids will enjoy them. But, then again maybe I will lose them all. Maybe in one swift moment hundreds of thousands of moments captured will be gone. If that day comes, I’ll cry. I’ll grieve the loss, but in the end….I’ll pick up my camera again and risk losing it all again….because it is more about the slowing down of life that happens when I pick up my camera. It is more about seeing beauty in what can feel very routine and mundane. Photography is a gift.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I would read the above paragraphs and think about how photography is a gift in relation to capturing moments with people I know and love.  Or even capturing cool moments with strangers.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I mostly just love photographing people.  I am not a landscape/scenic photographer.  But today, when I read those words again and was thinking about what photos to blog with this post, I thought about some scenic photos I shot in Montana when I was there a few weeks ago.  Maybe it's because I was very overwhelmed thinking about trying to decide what "people pictures" I would use, out of the literally thousands that I have on my hard drive.  But mostly, I think I chose the scenic pics because it IS so unusual for me to shoot images like that.  I love, love Montana, and I forced myself to stop the car several times and get out and take a few pictures and it was exactly like Ashley said, it was more about the slowing down of life and absorbing the beauty of the moment. 





I hope you are all having a lovely week.  We're halfway through it now.  Come on, weekend! :)

~abi~