FAMILY | 07.15.14

Many of you know that I love taking photos and have always felt fairly comfortable behind my camera. But I’ve always existed in a strange grey-area with it – that space between not shooting in full auto but not feeling confident to shoot in full manual. 

I’ve shot plenty of images I’ve loved but I’ve never felt fully in control of what I’m doing and it's always nagged at me that I have this wonderful tool – my camera – but I’ve only ever scratched the surface of what it's capable of. and most importantly, what I’m capable of. That nagging always made me reluctant to own the fact that I liked photography. Like I hadn't quite earned the right or something.

I’ve read tutorials about and experimented with manual mode plenty but it never felt like i was getting the full picture and feeling equipped to just haul off and start shooting in manual and get predictable results. So I’d always fall back to my comfort zone: aperture priority and good lighting. but even then i still felt like my results were a mixed bag – some hits, some misses. 

Back to that nagging feeling.  It’s been a quiet goal of mine to take my photography a little more seriously. to, you know, invest a little time and energy into something i love for the sheer pleasure of  learning more about this thing that gives me a creative charge and that – wait for it – I feel like I’m kind of okay at. Sometimes my life gets so wrapped up in motherhood that I can so easily forget that there's a me here, too. 

Have I mastered manual exposure? That would be generous to say right now. But I can honestly say that I cannot imagine ever putting my camera in any other mode than manual again. For me, things don't always sink in right when I expect them to, as much as I’d like them to. But every single wee for the past 6 months or so, I had at least one moment where it suddenly came together for me and made sense.

Since the birth of Mudpie Photography, I know there's no turning back for me and I’ll just continue to grow as long as I continue to shoot.