009.

Things I Learned After Shooting My First Wedding


-You need at least 4 rechargable batteries... or a battery pack.
-You need more than a 1 GB memory card. This caused a problem. I need a 10 GB... or bigger.
-Take a lot of pictures. I took about a 1000 but a lot of them are blurry. I think if I took 3000 I'd have more options to choose from.
-Be more explorative with where you can photograph people.
-Be more creative with posing. I wish I would have gotten sillier pictures with the bridal party.
-When posing people make sure they're all postured the same way. It makes the picture more cohesive.
-Don't wear heels. Unless you're skilled. Or it's an indoor wedding.
-An attachable flash could come in handy too.
-Don't bring a lens that is broken. I had to manually focus with it and it was a pain in the butt.
-Get a light meter and learn the camera's functions for lighted portraiture.

So it was an awesome experience. I made a pretty good amount for my first time. I'm interested in doing more weddings.

008.

I'm photographing my first ever wedding today. I cannot tell you how excited I am!

My interview for the portrait studio went well, but I had to turn them down. I was only going to make $8.25 an hour without a set number of hours per week compared to my $10.55 an hour job where I get 20 hours a week. I have to pay rent and lots of other things so it was too risky to take up. Unfortunately. Since then I've become a lot more content with my current job.

As far as school goes, it was a bad week. Tomorrow is going to be a catch up day. I'll be sitting the photo lab for at least 6 hours so there's my chance. My friend Josh will be coming up for the day to help me work on a photo idea I've been seriously drooling over all week. I'm excited to finally have the pictures and have something physical to work with.

I feel like I have so much going for me. So many things to look forward to now that I've gotten totally involved in my own life. As of right now it's really easy to see and understand what is going to drag me down and that just makes it easy to let go and move on. If something's not going to bring positivity into my life then I'm going to stick it in the back of my mind.

Hopefully this is the set schedule for October:

October 1st - Gold Motel @ Union Terrace
October 9th - Fright Fest at Six Flags
October 16th - Mazomanie with family to get pumpkins/Ski Hi for apples
October 23rd - Halloween party?
October 27th - Mae in Chicago (farewell tour… it will be bittersweet.)
October 30th - Halloween weekend

Once again... I'm really happy.

007.

My life has been excessively busy. I'm having a hard time even writing this because there's about ten different things going on. Everything is wonderful though, except for the whole school thing. I've been slacking. I'll admit it. I'm really motivated and inspired for my photography and it's all I want to think about. My journalism class is bringing me down. The class I'm in is not my thing because it's all about writing hard, honest news. It lacks creativity and the assignments are tedious. I'm working on it though and this weekend, or part of it, will be dedicated to catching up.

I have class all day tomorrow and I'll be working on homework too. I'm done at 9:30 (at night) and I'll either be hanging out with friends or heading back home to Madison to start my busy weekend. Friday I'm going to be working on a photo series. The idea came to me during the week and I'm so excited about it. Who knew something good could come out of such a bad experience. Saturday I'm shooting a friend's wedding. And I've got a lot of homework. Busy!

I'm happy.

006.

So it's been quite a few days since my last post. A lot has happened, good and bad. I've been in kind of a sad place personally for the past month but every day that goes by I keep remembering who I am and what I want. I found out some pretty upsetting news and didn't deal with it the best way I possibly could because I was so scared. I upset someone I love very much. I won't go into details. We'll just say that someone from my past (far into my past) hurt me, and other people, badly. It isn't resolved yet, but that will be determined soon.

The good news though is that I have a job interview on Friday. I put in a resume randomly out of boredom. Well, I got an email saying that I stood out and so I emailed them back explaining that I was very interested and excited for the opportunity to work for their company. I got the call yesterday, after calling my mom upset about the bad situation I stated earlier. I was walking around the hallways on campus crying on the phone to my mom because I was so upset. But the call from the company put me in a better mood.

The interview is for a position at JC Penney Portrait Studios. So I would be working with photography (my passion) and portraiture with, I'm sure, an array of all ages and sizes. I'm an incredibly shy person but to tell you the truth it's become exhausting. All I want to do is talk to people and meet new people. So I feel like this job will give me that opportunity. I'm really going to work hard to express how much I want this job. I'm even going to take out my piercings if need be. They'll be missed but I'd rather have a photo job.

Also I've become a part of an online video blog group with 8 other girls. One of them I know because I met her my freshman year of college. You can find that on Tumblr and Youtube. I'll be posting my video on Sunday! Which, by the way, is my first day of being a photo labby on campus.

005.

My first week of my last year in college is over and I am overwhelmed. There is so much to do in the next nine months. Build up my resume, apply to listings, write a cover letter and artist statement. Not to mention build up my body of work and figure out exactly what it is I'm trying to share with the world.

I've become so anxious. Counselors and professors are saying, "prepare now, apply now." I'm so eager to figure everything out and get it organized and I've never felt so motivated to get it together. At this point it's not worth it to sit around and worry that I don't have enough experience or aren't as good as other artists out there. I just have to be confident in what I've achieved and understand that I'm going to improve over time. Someone's going to want me to work for them. It might take 20 job applications and 20 interviews to get there, but it happens it will all be worth it. It's going to take time and experience to get to my ideal career. I just need to focus on taking small steps to get there, otherwise I might just crash and burn.

I'm grateful I can find excitement in all this stress.