An Engagment!

I don't know if you recall or not, but I have a Life List. You can take a gander at it here.

And on that Life List is "be asked to take photos of an event." I added this about 3 months ago as a sincere wish that someone would recognize my photography and perhaps give me a chance to photograph their event. 

This brings me to this past weekend. One of my friends recently became engaged, and she had asked me if I would be willing to shoot their engagements and possibly their wedding. 

Woah. 

First, it felt wonderful to feel recognized. I think at the core of everything, as humans we all want someone to see us. Really and truly see us and our passions and hopes and our dreams. And while photographing their love may not fulfill my hopes and dreams and passions, I defintely felt recognized. 

Yet, I struggled with it. My heart was saying, "yes, yes! you're wonderful and you are a good photographer. do it." But my brain, oh that rascal, was replying, "huh. you're a student. and not an art student at that. you can't do this. they won't turn out well, because you don't know what you're doing. Only real photographers can do that." And that last comment is the crux of it isn't it? Well, after debating, I finally told my brain to stop. Seriously, stop. If they don't like the engagements, then we will find another photographer. It's okay. 

So, last Sunday, I met with Mary and Shawn at the place where they were engaged and I had the honor to photograph snippets of their love. And I have never experienced something quite as great as that. 

Below are a couple of my favorites, but you can see all of them on my flickr page.

So doing this as brought up some pretty significant thoughts in my heart and my head. 

And I owe it to Mary, for recognizing me.

(I would love to hear your thoughts about the photos - you can comment here or on any of the images on flickr!)