Little Mama on the Prairie: Finding your Joy

I wanted to blog a little about this Photography course call Finding your Joy that I'm taking right now. You can find it at http://willettedesigns.com/. Kelly Willette designed this course to document your life as a mother. She realized, after putting all her pictures in photo albums (Go Kelly, you are my hero!) that she wasn't in any of the pictures. She is always the one behind the camera. I can relate with that.

I have looked thru countless photos of my children as babies sleeping on their daddy, I don't have any of those. ): So sad, can you hear me wine. Anyways, I do have a few pictures with each of my girls and I will treasure those always. As in, if there is fire, I will grab my babies and my pictures and run like heck!

So back to my story of the assignment. This week was all about learning how to take a self portrait. Learning to pose and take your own picture using a tripod and a remote shutter release. Well it was very challenging to say the least. Not only to let go of...me in front of a camera.....( primal scream inserted) but to lose control of perfection. These shots will not be in focus, they will be soft, you wont get the perfect exposure or composition, however, we as mothers are not perfect, not in focus all the time and that is the beauty of it. I love that, I want to have photos that my girls will look back at and probably laugh at, but see how much I love them. I want them to see me hugging and kissing them, and someday when they are mamas to look back and relate. I have a couple of picture of me with my mom, very few but I cherish those and they are beautiful to me....a young mama with her baby girl. What is not beautiful about that. So in this post I'm not trying to be conceited or self righteous. I just want to show you what I captured this week, such a stretching this assignment was. Oh and I still have to get a shot with my chickens....maybe Peter could help me with that!