resolutions

above are some of my favorite photos i’ve ever taken / edited. those golden hues… my goodness.

i remember this day perfectly because i was literally stuck outside for FOUR shoots, all at the same location. these pictures were taken in a half hour break i had where i sped over to my best friend dana’s house and made her come with me for a mini photo session before my next shoot began.

looking back on these pictures now however, i feel great disappointment. even after spending eight hours there, i never really looked around. this is a huge flaw of mine that i plan on working very hard to change in 2018.

new years resolutions are kinda bs in my opinion. most goals people make are either too big to ever be attained or too insignificant to ever be truly proud of. but hey, if they help ya sleep at night, go for it! with that being said, it’s kind of funny how much the first of january does really seem like a fresh start.

also, i figure if i share my resolution with you guys, i’ll be more entitled to stick to it. so don’t let me down everyone, i need you.

my resolution for 2018 is to never let my camera block my vision of the world. photography is a really beautiful beautiful thing. you’re capturing the greatest details of being alive. but it is so important for me to remember, it is just a picture. i realize this sounds extremely hypocritical of me. i love taking cool pictures to show off just as much as the next guy (actually probably 10x more than the next guy), but seeing the intricate beauty of the world with your own two eyes will always beat a pixelated flat version. i want to have memories based entirely off of experience, not just because i have a photo of it. like many girls my age, social media and technology run our lives. we go on hikes to take a picture of it for our snapchat stories, we wear makeup to the beach because we know that we’re going to want to post something cute on instagram, and we have deep intellectual conversations with people just to screenshot it for VSCO. what about going…. to go. talking with others to expand our own knowledge. being places, to simply just be.

i also want to build the realization that every single day is beautiful, even if it doesn’t look like the pictures above. i used to say a lot, “man, today was a bad day.” yes okay, overall it could have easily sucked. but there had to be at least one good thing about it, right? you had to smile at least once. and if not, something had to make the day suck less. whether it be laying with your dog, not totally failing your test, or eating your favorite cereal. find the good.

i wish i could go back to this day (october 21, 2017) and feel the warm fall breeze, listen to some good music in my car on my break, and be grateful i was there to witness it. then after i took it in, maybe snap a couple photos. because after all that's what i'm here for.

may 2018 bring all of you new experiences, new relationships, and new happiness. we deserve it.

mar