I've spent a lot of time thinking about photography this weekend. I took a great class on PhotoShop from the guy I'm taking the photography classes from. Honestly, I knew a lot of the information covered already but it was nice to really refine and fully understand what each tool does and what it's truly capable of. I sincerely wish I could have a couple days to just sit at my desk and retouch and edit photos. After all I have nearly 20,000 images on my computer. But alas we have an insanely busy couple of weeks coming up and I can't. Maybe someday.
I realized several things over the weekend. For one, if I truly want photography to become my hobby, I need to embracee it. There is so much more I could be doing than occasionally taking photos, putting them on the computer, and then (sometimes) uploading them to facebook. What's the point? Photography is preserving a moment and capturing the feeling/mood/essence of a period of time. I haven't gotten photos printed (for myself, I frequently enough get photos printed to send to others) in... ummm... probably 6 months? Sad really. Especially because I created a scrapbook for Jacob for Valentines day last year and absolutely fell in love with scrapbooking. So why would a photographer who loves scrapbooking not embrace it?
I get so caught up in Jack's therapy, trying to get Liam enough attention so that he doesn't feel unloved and ignored (which is something many families with an autistic child struggle with), and trying to help Jacob with his military stuff and also managing his tattoo business that I forget to do anything for myself. I feel so guilty when I even think about doing something for me much less doing something that costs money (I actually had an incredibly difficult time Friday morning buying myself 3 t-shirts that I found on clearance on Target for $2.38 a piece, that's insane right?!). I'm coming to a point in life that I need to do something for myself. I need to spend time without one kid on my hip and the other attached to my leg. I need embrace my hobby. I need to do something before I once and for all lose my identity.
So I'm going to start spending time for me. I'm going to start getting my photos actually edited (which chances are won't be much. I truly feel it's cheating to take a photo and turn around and alter the heck out of it on the computer.), get good quality images printed (now that I know a fantastic photo lab that happens to be owned by Jerry, my photography teacher), and scrapbook the heck out of them. Chances are someday we won't be living in exciting places and doing fun things all the time with the kids. Eventually Jacob will get out of the military and we will move to some small town in the Midwest and live a "boring" (I don't really think it's boring... I actually can't wait!) life like most of America and I want my kids to have something to remember this all by. They're so young now chances are they won't remember any of this- I certainly don't remember anything from before I was at least 7 and even then those memories are pretty patchy and I think many of them are just things I remember from photographs. We went to the aquarium last weekend and the boys LOVED it. I'm totally going to take the photos I took and make them a book out of them. How neat would it be for them to have books that they are the stars of?!
But unfortunately it's going to be a few weeks before I can get a chance to do this stuff. But I will gosh darn it when things settle down. And come this Thursday when I leave for class (which is the start of the second photography class which I am SUPER excited about) I'm not going to feel guilty. I deserve one night a week. And quite frankly my kids deserve some time with just their dad! One step at a time...
On a lighter note we had a pretty funny but horribly embarrassing moment happen today at church. We took the boys to the Orthodox church for the first time in a long time. Something we have been saying we were going to do for quite awhile but chicken out each week. Jack did SO well. He whispered most of the time and when he got loud he listened when we told him to quiet down. Liam did pretty well too. Jacob had both boys in the church (I was standing out in the entry way where we had all been moments before) and the boys were wandering around when Liam suddenly made an abrupt turn and ran into the Sanctuary behind the Iconastas which is somewhere ONLY the Priests and Deacons are allowed to go. Jacob quickly ran over to the side and was whispering as forcefully as he could for Liam to come back when Liam ran out through front doors (which represent the gates of Heaven). Now those doors are only open at certain times and even the Priest is only allowed to exit through them at certain points where they are in their whole Priestly garb. Thankfully it was communion time and no one saw him! I about had a heart attack when I heard what happened. Oh Liam! Other than that church went really well- much, much better than I anticipated. Jack even did his attempt at the sign of the cross and kissed the Icons like he's supposed to!! I am so relieved and excited to get to start attending it every Sunday.
Well I've managed to stay up well past bedtime for about the fourth day in a row now. I have so much cleaning to do in the next 36 hours. If only I could dream about cleaning and my house would magically clean itself!
I'm going to end tonight with the one image I managed to edit last night after the boys went to bed. It's one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken. This is most definitely going to be one of the first images I get printed :)
