Conquering Fear

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do"

 ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Last Saturday I did the thing that I was certain I could not do - a family portrait session.

My friend Jill has been asking me for a few years to do some photos of her family. One of her sons lives in North Carolina so the window of opportunity is not open often. I always declined, stating that I don't shoot people. I like landscapes - things that don't move and aren't concerned with how they look in a photograph. But Jill never gave up, having more faith in me than I had in myself. This year when she asked, I finally said yes, which probably surprised her as much as it surprised me. I knew it was time to conquer one of the last big things that scared me in photography.

I told her though, if we were going to do this, I was going treat this like a professional portrait session. I had Jill over to my house a couple weeks before the session so we could view poses from the board I had been pinning to on Pinterest. Once we picked poses, I did a screen shot of them and put them in a folder that I then emailed to her so she could continue to review and share with her family. I have no idea if this is how a professional portrait session begins, but I know this is what I would want if I was the client.

The day of the session dawned overcast, cooler, and windy. Two out of three isn't bad. The wind was the problem since we were taking these photos at the beach. I kept praying for the overcast sky to stay, we weren't taking these until later in the day, and if the sun came out I would be shooting into the sun. Of course, shortly after lunch here comes the sun, and it was still windy. Because of the wind and the high water level of Lake Michigan there is very little beach to stand on. In the shot above, they formed their line and then backed into the water. I am perched on the side of a ten foot dune drop off to get the shot. You learn the most when you have challenges, and I definitely learned. I still have a lot more to learn before I begin to feel comfortable in this arena.

We all had a great time, and I am hopeful that as many memories were created in the process of doing, as were created in the actual photographs. I know that they will remember me standing in knee-deep water with waves reaching upper thigh to get this shot of all of them sitting on a wooden deck that had been buried under the sand until this year. Next year the deck could be gone again, and the little ones will be even bigger. Time keeps moving forward so it is good to capture the memories and the moments now.