Step One

I know it's cliche', but I can't get that quote, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" out of my head. The new blog has officially launched, and while it still needs a great deal of work, and I REALLY need to finish the website first and foremost, I must admit that its completion feels like that first "single step". I am nervous and excited and overwhelmed all at once and I just feel like this dream is beginning to take shape and become tangible.

I also want to, once again, take the opportunity to exclaim my gratitude to Jen & Gary Mobbs of Mobbs Photography (my awesome wedding photographers). Jen- without your help, I have NO IDEA how I would have figured all of this out! Thank you a million times over!

Check out the new blog here.

Alex is here!

After having such fun at my first ever maternity session, I've been so looking forward to meeting Alex as he made his entrance into the world! While he arrived in early February, the activity in the DesRosiers' house has been a little hectic (duh!) and we finally were able to schedule a time to meet last Saturday. Alex wasn't feeling his best, but we had a great time nonetheless! One of the things that I really enjoy about photographing babies and kids is that they are just these perfect little metaphors of life- they change in an instant, from quiet to chaotic to bursting with joy...and just when it seems that the tears will never end, we are graced with a heart-stopping smile and the sadness and frustration just melt away.

I've almost learned how to use my slideshow software, so look for a slideshow soon!!

Until then, here are a few to tide you over...










Bailey says that SHE used to get that kind of attention!

In a Flash!

As the school semester and my law school career begin to (thankfully!) draw to a close, I found myself thinking this morning about what I will take away from my experience even though I've decided not to pursue a career in the law. Aside from fluency in "legal-ese", I have been fortunate enough to make a few friends along the way. Different from the friends of your childhood or those go-to pals that can be counted on in thick & thin, good classmates are valuable in their own right. Sure, they can pass along notes for classes that you miss and can make great study partners, but more than anything, they remind you that you are all in this together, that your difficulty is shared, that you are not alone.

I didn't actually get to know Alison until this year, but her sense of humor and fun personality has already made school a more pleasant place! When she agreed to let me chase her German Short-haired Pointer puppy, Flash, around with my camera, I was really excited!

The late afternoon was mighty chilly, but as the sun began to drop, the light turned this amazing golden color and I just couldn't get enough of Flash in the tall grass!

Here are a few favorites...

With a Little Help From Our Friends...

I have several other posts that I've started and not finished yet, but I wanted to get this one down "on paper" before my emotions began to fade...

This afternoon I met with local wedding photographer extraordinaire, Shane Snider, and he was really fantastic. Shane photographed the wedding of our good friends Jennie & Rebekah in November of 2007 (you may remember Jennie from our wedding photographs- she was our officiant!) and Jennie has been encouraging me to contact him. It took me a little while to find the courage...not every photographer I've approached has been exactly welcoming (which I suppose is understandable) and that pesky voice in the back of my head kept saying things like, "What if he takes one look at your work and tells you that you might want to go take the bar exam after all?" But contact him I did and he actually agreed to meet with me (thank you, Jennie!!)!

So, after three outfit changes (again! I've been changing clothes a lot this week, eh?) and armed with a box of cookies (are people allowed to be mean if you bring them cookies?), I left the house an hour before our scheduled meeting time (just in case!)...and arrived on his block with nearly forty minutes to spare. Yes, I'm a dork. So I sat in my car in a parking lot down the street and listened to the remainder of my book on tape (I told you- I'm a dork!), doing deep breathing and trying to figure out how to NOT seem totally intimidated.

I need not have worried. Shane was awesome. After the preliminary warnings of how tough an industry this is and some discussion about gear and must-have lenses, etc, he really helped me prioritize some of the steps I need to take and gave me some fantastic advice about finding my own style, consistency, and how to really get going. He even took some time to look at what I posted on my SmugMug page and gave some great constructive feedback.

I just walked out of his office this afternoon SO excited. It's photographers like him, like the Mobbs, like Meredith that help me combat thos voices in my head, that make me feel like I'm not completely insane to have chosen this path, and that I can, with a lot of hard work, make it.

Thanks, Shane!

Tots 2 Teens Seminar

On Monday we had snow. Enough to close down all of the local public schools. Today it was over 80 degrees. Incredible! For the first time, it is beginning to feel like the end of school is really as near as it is and that the next stage of my life is really hovering just beneath the surface alongside the crocus flowers! Oh, the anticipation of Spring!

With my heart and eyes toward that future, I attended Sandy Puc's Tots 2 Teens Seminar today and was just blown away by the amount of information that she shared!



After three outfit changes (casual? trendy? business-y?) , I arrived at the seminar site thirty minutes before its scheduled start time, repeating the mantra, "I am not intimidated, I am not intimidated, I am not intimidated..." over and over in my head. I was completely intimidated. I was totally convinced that everyone there would just take one look at me and know I was a big fat wanna-be with no skills. Fortunately, I remembered after a few minutes there, that no one was paying any attention to me- everyone was there to learn, just like me! So I drooled over the gorgeous and quirky Finao products and played with the Canon 5D Mark II for the first time (oh, how I adore thee!) before settling into my seat poised with paper and pen to absorb every last bit of information I could glean.

I have to make a confession. After searching the big ol' World Wide Web for seminars and workshops that I could both fit into my current school schedule AND afford right now and finding almost nothing under $250, I was a little skeptical of a 6 hour seminar that cost only $79. After being disappointed with a photography course at a local art center that I took last summer, I was worried that this would be another "you get what you pay for" kind of deal and I was fully prepared with low expectations. Lesson learned. I frantically scribbled over thirty pages of notes as I attempted to keep up with the marketing plans, the descriptions of tools and camera settings, and tricks for making children sit still for more than two seconds. While I am not sure that a full-time children's portrait studio is my goal, I learned SOOOO much that I can't wait to apply to my business and to my photography! I have a couple of children/family sessions lined up for this week (I'm on Spring Break- yay!!) and I can't wait to try out some of what I learned!

Risk

"Text me when you get there! Please be careful- my life is in that car!" I yelled to Justin this morning as he walked up the hill to where his snow covered car was blowing out warm-up exhaust. He's off to orientation. Orientation at another hospital. The one where he will be picking up extra shifts. So that I can be a photographer instead of a lawyer. In the snow. In North Carolina. Where they don't salt the roads and no one knows how to drive in it.

I read a post recently on one of the many blogs that I obsessively follow that discussed holding on too tightly. I struggle with it every day. Maybe it's because I'm an oldest child. Maybe it's because I'm a girl. Maybe it's genetics. Maybe it's because I've had cancer more than once and know how quickly life can change. I hold on too tightly.

I have a funny risk tolerance. The notion has come up repeatedly lately as people respond to this career change I've decided on. You can tell the people with low risk tolerance immediately...when I mention that I'm shelving my legal career to pursue photography, they begin to blink quickly and insist that I HAVE to take the bar! Their discomfort is evident and I am often at a loss to convince them that I truly believe that it will all be okay, that they can't say anything that the voice of doubt in my head hasn't mentioned a thousand times a day.

My risk tolerance for most things is pretty high. I worked for years as a whitewater river guide, as a backpacking guide, and have done all of those "life to do list" things like sky-dived and bungee jumped and mountain biked in Moab. I quit school to "play outside" and moved on a whim whenever I got a craving for new geography. I met my husband when he and I were both jobless and hiking from Georgia to Maine, not sure exactly where we'd land when the hike was over! I like that kind of risk, it is what makes me feel like I am really living and not just "getting by." I recognize that, to great extent, it has been a privilege to be able to make these choices, and I will be the first to admit that not every risk I've taken has panned out as planned.

But over the last few years, there are areas of my life in which my tolerance for risk has diminished. While I'm still content to "jump out of a perfectly good airplane," watching my husband drive away on icy, unsalted, roads to a hospital an hour away makes my heart clench with fear. The safety and well-being of the ones I love is a risk that I'm no longer comfortable with.

So I will sit here and keep reminding myself that I can't hold on so tightly and wait for that phone to ring.

Cuppa's SmugMug page...

So I have been attempting shoot like crazy lately so that I can work on slowly gaining the skills necessary to make this venture a success! That said, I am feeling the pressure to really start working on those Photoshop skills! Spring Break...I will hit it hard (right after I finish writing the paper that is due after the break and studying for the test that will be on the following Monday, THEN I will hit it hard! When is this school thing over again?).

Considering how stretched thin I am, I thought I would mention that Cuppa has a SmugMug page now! While it doesn't look the way it eventually will, it is where I am posting the work I am doing as I finish it. If you are interested in checking it out, click here.

The Singer Formerly Known As

A logo is a business's calling card of sorts...it's supposed to be the symbol that conveys a sense of the business's personality and style. Mary Elisa, the brilliant friend who has been working so diligently on my color palette has also been working her tail off to create a logo for me. Can I tell you, she asked me for some feeling words that I wanted my business to evoke and then she came up with THIS! I think she dove right into my brain and articulated into my logo what I couldn't define in our conversation.

A HUGE shout out to Mary Elisa! I know we have some finishing touches to nail down, but here is the general concept...



Feedback is welcome!!

MaryCares is launched!

We launched my Mom's new business, MaryCares! It is a petsitting business that I just know is going to be a HUGE success! If anyone was born to work with animals, it is my Mom! So if you know anyone in the Corpus Christi region of Texas who might be in need of trustworthy pet care, send them her way!



By the way...big shout out to Michael Cain for whipping up her logo like he was slicing cake!

Sweets for My Sweet

Happy Valentine's Day!

I was writing in my journal this morning and thinking about what it means to love. I was thinking especially of what it has meant in my marriage, in my relationship with Justin these last years. My breath catches when I consider how truly and deeply privileged I am to have the heart of such a man.

Things have not always been pretty between us. Our relationship began as a long distance affair. While you can argue both the benefits and detriments of such an arrangement, we were eager to be in the same town and eventually just decided that it made more sense to move in together. Aside from the normal challenges of adjusting to cohabitation, very shortly after we moved in together, at the age of twenty-four, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Let me just tell you- THAT will throw a wrench in a new relationship! Between treatments and side-effects, we were still trying to figure out what we were to one another, whether this person was "the one," and how to face looming mortality in the midst of our immortal twenties. There were some ugly times in there. Times when we weren't the partner that the other needed, that we hurt or disappointed or failed one another. But we kept coming back to this underlying truth: we loved one another. Through thick and thin, the love was there, even while we were still learning how to do it well.

At our wedding, we chose to do several things that were meaningful to us. One of them was, while we wanted to include the traditional vows, we also wanted to make some promises that would be more applicable to daily living, to the partnership that over the 5+ years we've been together, we've nurtured into something miraculous. So we came up with seven promises that we felt would keep us both healthy, happy, and in love. They ranged from promising to remember who we are as individuals and to do the work required to maintain a good relationship with ourselves, to making quality time together a priority even when it may mean sacrificing other activities that are important to us, to demonstrating our love each day through touch and affection. Even just the simple act of deciding on each promise brought us closer. We work toward fulfilling those promises every single day.

We also chose our reading very carefully. While there are so many gorgeous bits of both poetry and prose floating in the world of love, we chose to read an excerpt from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I know it's not sexy, but we wanted something real to us. Something that said we would make it, that we would survive the tough times. The excerpt was a story about a man who approached Covey after a conference where he'd spoken about being proactive. The man said that he believed what Covey had said, but that it just didn't apply to all situations, specifically his own- he and his wife just weren't in love anymore. They'd tried a few things, but the love just wasn't there. He was concerned for their children, but just didn't see a way to feel in love agin. Covey told the man to love his wife. The man argued that they weren't in love anymore. Covey again told him to love her. The man, frustrated, asks how you can love someone you don't love. And Covey replies that love is a verb, that love-the feeling- is a fruit of love, the verb. He says that love is something you do- it is the sacrifices you make, the giving of self- that love is a value that is actualized though loving actions. And if you can be proactive and love (the verb), then love (the feeling) can be recaptured. Again- I know it's not sexy, but both of us just connected to this concept of choice, of actions defining our love.

My husband loves me every single day. I feel it in the coffee he preps and sets the timer for so I have a warm cup waiting for me when I wake up. I feel it in his willingness to run out and start my car or scrape my windshield when it's freezing outside just to spare me the moment of discomfort. I feel it when he looks at me. I feel it when he patiently rolls over and goes back to sleep without complaint when my snooze alarm rings for the 11th time at 5am (every. single. day.). I feel it when he calls me on his way home from a 13 hour shift at the hospital to let me know he's on his way and to see if I need him to pick anything up along the way. I feel it when he sits me down and says- don't defer your dreams, Cindy, I will pick up extra shifts to make the bills- you go grab that camera of yours and seek this thing that calls you.

A Rose By Any Other...

We have a name!!!!! Yay!!! Drum roll please...

Cuppa Photography

As in... a "cuppa" tea, or a "cuppa" joe, or "let's sit and have a cuppa and catch up on life." My hope is that it evokes the same kind of sense of warmth and comfort that we get from good friends, beloved childhood memories, and the kind of conversation that can only happen with a friend who sees your soul.

I bought a website template today, but am woefully short on images that are even passable...my goal is to launch by the end of March, so if you know someone who can use some photos, send them my way! I have a portfolio to build and skills to learn (that translates into...I'm cheap, so get me now at a big fat discount...as in I'm free...please please please let me take your picture!!!).

Have I mentioned that I have 3 months of school left...yeah, I keep forgetting too. So it's time to put down my excitement and pick up Real Estate Finance (and you wonder why I changed paths!).

Moving Forward

So I have been overwhelmed with the ever growing list of things to decide, learn, organize, and do to move this photography decision forward. What do I call it? Everyone seems to use their names, but "Cindy Giovagnoli Photography"? (1) It doesn't have much of a ring to it, and (2) I have a sneaking suspicion that people would avoid calling because they didn't know how to pronounce it! So Justin and I have a new game that we have been playing all week. The rules mostly seem to consist of tacking the word "photography" onto everything in sight. "Spoon Photography?" No. "How 'bout 'Fork Photography'?" Nope. "Ooh! Ooh! What about 'Fork AND Spoon Photography'?" Seriously? Is this the best we can do?

That said, at least the general color scheme is relatively simple...I'm just going to carry over the colors I've been using for my organization business for the last several years: Carolina blue (a light blue for all who may be unaware of UNC's colors!) and a deep chocolate brown. I'm excited to play with some accent colors, though, and keep getting drawn back to red as my primary accent. I would use that blue for everything if I could (take my house as an example- my office is painted that color with white trim and espresso colored wood everywhere; my bedroom is all blue, brown, and white...I just LOVE LOVE LOVE those three colors together!!!). I have been working with my friend, Mary Elisa, a super talented artist who works with a large marketing firm in Chicago to come up with my palette and she has been just fantastic!



Now if only we could settle on a name...

A few cuties!

Between school and life, I've fallen woefully behind on processing my personal photos...including our honeymoon! I was prompted to address at least a few a couple of weeks ago while beginning to put together a website for my Mom's new business, MaryCares petsitting. As I searched through my archives for fun images of furry friends, I realized that I took quite a few while Justin and I were in Charleston, SC in December for our honeymoon! Here's just a little sampling of the "critters"...I promise to fill in the blanks with the rest of our trip SOON!

We popped into the Imaging Arts Gallery and met this little princess sleeping on the job...





How can you not adore a rescued greyhound? We met these two in front of the old Customs House and (small world!) it turned out that they were from Chapel Hill!






The only time we actually left the peninsula of Charleston proper was to take a day trip out to Magnolia Plantation. When we arrived, we were met by these guys!

Seriously!

Brace yourselves- there is big news coming! Are you ready?

I'm DOING IT!

That's right. After endless days and nights "bargaining" and what seems like a million and two conversations with Justin, the Mobbs, and my good friend, Meredith, I have officially decided NOT to sit for the bar exam after graduation and to pursue photography instead. Holy Crapp.

So amidst the screaming voices of self doubt and criticism raging in my head, there is this piece of my soul that sits quietly with her hands folded and smiles. She knew I'd get here someday.

A "Star" is born...

...well, to ME anyway! Holy CRapp- I am sitting here just blown away!! Have you all heard of the uber-talented Jasmine Star? I have just a tiny bit of time, but can I just say this...

SHE DROPPED OUT OF LAW SCHOOL TO BE A PHOTOGRAPHER!!!!!!!!!

How 'bout THAT for a sign?

I can't wait to start reading her blog and to find out a little more about her story...

The Stages of Grief?

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the book, "On Death and Dying." In it, she identified five stages that a dying patient experiences when informed of their terminal prognosis:

* Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
* Anger (why is this happening to me?)
* Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
* Depression (I don't care anymore)
* Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

Lately I have felt as though I have been going through these stages as they apply to my career choice. While I would NEVER make light of the grief experienced by one diagnosed with a terminal illness or who recently lost a loved one, I do think that these emotional stages have been present in my day to day of late, albeit clearly to a lesser degree. My mental dialogue has followed a similar path several times a day of late...

First up is denial: "I can't pursue photography- I'm not a talented, artistic person, I don't know enough, and I am GETTING MY LAW DEGREE!!"

Next is anger: "I hate school. No I don't. Yes, I do. Well, too bad, this is the path YOU chose, Cindy, so now you are stuck with it AND the $100k it cost you! Oh, by the way, you are 30 years old- it's time to suck it up and get your act together!" (The more angry I get, the more I start addressing myself in the third person- yes, I know it's a problem)

Then comes bargaining: "Okay, I will practice law for five years, pay my loans down, and learn everything I can about photography, THEN I will leave the law behind and pursue this thing that awakens my soul." "Well...what if I practiced law part-time and did photography part-time? In a down economy, I'm sure that there are PLENTY of firms who would be happy to hire me on a part-time basis, right?" "No, no, no...practice for five years- you can do it, Cindy- be strong!"

And then I come to depression: "Don't be crazy...I have owned this camera for how many months? I'm not artistic...just face it, Cindy- you are stuck being a lawyer." (insert a big sigh)

The inevitable acceptance often appears as a bedfellow of the depression stage: "So that's that. The law it is."

My problem is that I never stay in depression or acceptance very long...I spend a gigantic amount of time and energy in bargaining. Justin bears my "bargaining" (as well as all the other stages!) like such a champ! He never fails to kiss me and tell me that he wants me to be happy- no matter what I decide to do with my life. (Which sends me right back to the bargaining table!)

I would venture to say that my "problem" is a true privilege- I am not deciding between food and rent here, but rather whether to choose one career path or another
while enjoying the support and encouragement of those that love me!

A Quick Peek

On Saturday, I had an incredible opportunity to take some maternity photos for friends Tania & Justin. They are expecting their first, Alex, in mere weeks and generously welcomed me into their home to attempt to capture this most precious of times. Words cannot begin to express what an amazing time I had- it was just wonderful! From Tania and Justin's willingness to try anything to the little tiny clothes and shoes, to Bailey, their gorgeous, hilarious dog...I had SUCH a great time and can't wait to start our exciting project when Alex makes his debut!

I'm only about a third of the way through the editing process, but here are a just a few of my favorites thus far...keep an eye out for more soon!