Why I LOVE photography
When I was a kid, my Mum would take lots of pictures on her camera and would print out several copies so that my brothers and I could pick which photos we chose to keep. We would then carefully put them in our own albums. I have these to this day and still love looking at them. Now my kids love flicking through them too. They are such treasured memories.
I remember in high school modern history I was in awe of the documentary-style photos of the World Wars. Total nerd moment, but I think that’s why I did so well in that subject - purely from looking over and over at those pictures in those textbooks. They told a story and I was intrigued to find out more.
I don’t think I even owned a camera until I started travelling with a girlfriend around Europe when I was 21. I spent a couple of hundred dollars on an SLR camera but it was always in auto. The photos were ok, but never the same as what I had seen in real life or in the magazines I pined over when organising different trips.
Fast forward to getting married and having 3 kids!
Three years ago I answered a facebook ad to learn to take better pictures of my kids (shout out to www.clicklovegrow.com). At the time, I took thousands of photos on my phone but the photos were never great - actually they were awful. So I began the enthusiast course and learnt SO much, that I dived straight into the advanced class. I was LOVING it. I really saw the difference in my photos and I loved being creative with my new hobby. Within a year friends started asking for me to take photos of their babies, families and events. ''
Around the same time, my brother died in an accident (it’s still hard to even write that). I put together the photo montage at his funeral and was so glad to have so many photos from his life. It made me want to hug my children the one-hundredth time they asked before they went to sleep and to take MORE photos and not just that - but be IN photos too. No one is going to care about the zit on my face or my extra roll.
Photography to me is about being able to re-live that moment over and over. I LOVE meeting families that have that magical bond, it really makes my job easy to capture the love and joy they have together. A photo can show emotions and feelings so much better than words sometimes and that’s what keeps me coming back over and over…
