The Journey: Head First

I like honesty, truthfulness, and logic; it’s one of my favorite combination of emotions! So I’m going to be honest with you…I jumped head first into this, with maybe a pair of baby wings attached to me hoping to goodness they’d help me fly!

Between 2006 and 2007 I had a few friends at the time who were professional photographers and I
would recommend blogs or locations that I saw during my outings. I
faithfully followed photographers like Jasmine Star as
well as my friends because I was inspired by every single photograph
they took. The emotions they were able to capture and stir inside of me
made me eat up every single blog post they wrote.

The summer of 2008 I purchased a used Canon 30D camera for Mister for his birthday and I was so excited to give it to him! I threw a joint family birthday party and we sang him Happy Birthday while I brought out the ice cream cake and a big box wrapped and decorated. He ripped the wrapping off and was so surprised that I had purchased something that was way out of our gift budget – but I knew he would love it and I was so excited to watch him learn how to use it!

I never dreamed I would pick up his camera, the thing was huge and black; it was very intimidating, but eventually I wanted to learn all the different settings. So we would sit at home and walk around downtown and go over the different settings of the camera, what aperture was, how to expose correctly, how to decide which ISO setting to use, and the difference between RAW and JPEG. I have a note book full of notes that I took trying to soak it all it.

Again I jumped in head first, I didn’t want to learn what the Program setting on the camera did, nope, I wanted to learn how to use Manual first. Try and wrap your head around that one when you’re just learning about ISO. Let me tell you, the first rounds of photographs…SUCKED! But I was determined!

Later that summer Mister and I took a trip down the Oregon Coast before he switched jobs as our final vacation that year, and this is when I could feel my feet reaching the edge of the ledge. We passed by all these beautiful locations that I wanted to photograph. But I didn’t want to photograph landscapes, I wanted someone IN it to photograph. I wanted to capture the same kind of emotions that I had been inspired by the photographs of my friends. I had had enough of passing by these beautiful locations when I told Mister to turn the car around and head towards a red barn that I had seen. I wanted to capture it, and he was going to be my model.

Over that week I learned how to shoot my model back lit and fell in love with the sun. I shot in the wide open sun, at night, at dawn and dusk, in a moving car, out on the water – everywhere. And Mister was my model. At one point I could feel his enthusiasm for being my model dwindling so I told him I was going to ask my windsurfing instructor to be my model. As cute as she was, he didn’t want her to suffer in front of my camera so he sucked it up some more while I played with my settings and asked him “Just 2 more?!”.

When we got home from our vacation, I was hooked and knew exactly what I wanted to do. A few weeks later I headed to the Small Business centre and applied for a business name and did all the paper work so that I had everything in order. A few weeks after that I set up my blogsite specializing in Children and Adley Studio was born. I jumped head first into this, with maybe a pair of baby wings attached to me hoping to goodness they’d
help me fly! Thank goodness those baby wings sure flutter fast!

3 comments
  • Anny ChihApril 14, 2010 - 3:29 PM

    Beautiful new business cards & website! 🙂
    ReplyCancel

  • shannon sewellApril 20, 2010 - 8:06 PM

    these are beautiful! congrats!!! 🙂
    ReplyCancel

  • lilyMay 17, 2013 - 8:18 AM

    Goodness, reading this was SO inspiring. It’s exactly what i’ve been feeling lately, to want to capture images like you and our amazing wedding photographer just so to REMEMBER it, them, then. Thank you for this old post!ReplyCancel