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!