Following Your Passions

Following your passions in life open doors to all sorts of opportunities. It's what brings hope, strength, and renewal when you feel all is lost. Without passion, you are simply walking aimlessly in the direction that others place in front of you because you don't know where you want to go yourself. I think the first step in defeating such a lifestyle is realizing this and keeping this idea in the back of your mind and never letting yourself forget it. There are so many things I feed off of to keep me going and one of those things are good, animated movies such as Disney, Pixar movies, and the wonderful creators of Wallace 'n' Grommet who came out with a wonderful movie today called Pirates: Band of Misfits. I absolutely enjoyed myself watching it!

I've always loved claymation in particular because of the detail and thought that goes into the body of work. Not to mention, I love working with clay myself. My friends and I made an entire city dedicated to things we made of clay and certain alien figures we dubbed "Dudes" and we would spend daysssss of our summers in our pre-teens and early teens working on all the creations we could possibly come up with. I'm so sad we never got photos of what we ended up making! At one time, there was an entire mall, downtown city, theme park, and a neighborhood where we had our own yards, roads, and everything that was all miniturized and made by us and scattered across the entire plains of my parents basement. So, watching these claymation movies it brings me back to those times.

I must admit I got a glimpse at a preview for the new Pixar film coming out called Brave. I felt so powerfully connected to the main character I was actually tearing up a bit. My mom was sitting next to me and I heard her whisper to my dad "The girl in this movie reminds me Brooke so much!" That made me smile so hard.




There are only 4 more days until we hop on a plane and start our journey to England! I cannot WAIT for this vacation. I must admit I need this vacation more than I have ever needed one in my entire life before. I'm sure there will be times later down the road I need one even greater than this now, but man, talk about working my ass off. All for the good though :) and much personal growth. So, its time for some more. The picture below was one taken of me by my hubby (fiance at the time) in 2007 when we made a trip to Leeds Castle :) I can't wait for the freedom to explore around like we did then.

I'm shooting a wedding tomorrow and I'm trying to get my brain working in wedding mode. I shot a wedding last weekend as well and haven't even finished going through all the photos! It will be nice when I'm not working a full time job on top of doing photography anymore. So, thought I'd share some tips and tricks that I have learned for shooting weddings:

*Batteries. Batteries. Batteries. You can't have enough. And memory cards!

*Pay close attention at the ceremony. You CANNOT miss The Kiss shot! 

*Stay hidden and unnoticed. The more unseen you are, the more comfortable people can be to just be themselves. Nobody likes a camera from a complete stranger right in their face. Not even me! 

*When doing posed pictures, take at least 2 of every pose. That way when you get to processing them on the computer, if one turns out blurry, improperly exposed, or just off to the way it should be, you have a back up. Plus it doesn't hurt to try and capture hidden smiles and get rid of blinking! 

*Just keep having fun. People thrive off your energy level. If you can bring it to the table, it will be there for people to feed from so to speak.

Speaking of energy levels, it's nearly 2 am and I have a full day of shooting ahead of me! Time to get some sleep :) I've got an insane week of awesomeness ahead of me!

-Brooke