I am completely floored and blown away by denial. I just recently woke up from a bout, I have to say I am shocked and surprised it got me again. Insidious.  I consider myself pretty  intuitive, tuned into myself and my people, but it took whispers from my kids for me to see. I have been struggling this year with all sorts of weird symptoms, to combat those I go to acupuncture, massage, practice some yoga, take my vitamins and eat pretty well. I was in my Docs office and she asked me to read a card she was sending to a friend and my response was tears. I am not a crier, but lately, I have been doing that often and mood swings and sleeplessness and really tight muscles and acid reflux and the list goes on. When she saw the tears she sweetly said ” Hey, lets check your hormones”.  In the meantime I have been also saying to myself I know perimenopause is down the road and I want to be ready when it comes. I would like to lose 20 lbs. but,  I gained 10 and I wasn’t even really eating. My blood work came back and we did take it on a special day. Well, I have been medically exonerated and am again totally blown  away because, what I had been waiting for had been in my house for a few years at least. I really thought it was everything else. After I got the blood work back I started reading my books. Night reading,  since I am awake anyway. I have 34 of the 35 symptoms. I was waiting for hot flashes. I found out they are like last in a 5 to 10 year process and some woman have cold flashes, that me, I just freeze. I am pushing 47. Books say this stuff starts at 35 ish. HA on me, big cosmic joke. I feel like I made it through a big chunk, but when your 12 year is whispering to the 14 year old over in the corner behind his hand ”Do you think she has the menopause?” It’s an attention getter. Over the last 6 months each one of the people I love and who love me, have said. “Uh, do you think you might be headed into that time?” and my rage-ful  response,, “Absolutely not! It’s you.”  HA, jokes on me and I am so grateful to live in a day and age where there is a solution. In the 1920 s they just threw woman like me in the nut house. Today I have many options about how to ease myself through this. I feel so grateful to the women that walked this path before me and struggled so I might have a solution.  Today I feel hopeful and relieved I am a normal 46 year old woman.

Fire can be beautiful

I received an email yesterday along those lines, with another similar to it, that said, I only want to communicate through email. My response, delete delete! I am not a desperate photographer or artist. I do it because I love it. I don’t have to make a living at it. I only have to create work I am proud of.  I am free to choose whom I want to spend time with, whom I want to photograph. I can’t express how great it feels to be free.  People don’t understand, I have to like my subjects in order to capture great pictures. Why? Because I am going to bring my perception of my subject to the image. Ansel Adams said, the image is a marriage of the subject and photographer. I don’t do email because I need to hear the tone of my client’s voice. Voice tone says everything. I can determine from the first conversation whether it is yes or no for me. If we like each other, then we meet and the deal is usually sealed. I am interviewing them too. 

Once I did a wedding for a bridezilla. Once and final time. I knew it when I booked her, but I thought it would be OK. I was with her for 9 hours and that was doable, but I had to look at her face in the editing room for another 40 hours. Every time I looked at her I was in a bad mood. Never again. 

For this reason, to stay true to my compass, I have taken on the job of managing our local chamber. Which allows me the creative freedom to work with whom I want, when I want? The condition of  my job is the Board’s flexibility to allow me to photograph weddings, they were very generous with me about this. My issue is time. I must be discerning about how I spend it and with whom.

Dave called me a few months back and explained he was a photographer from Chico. Creative imagery is very important to him.  That he has also photographed weddings and that he was looking at the regional talent and he found that my work impressed him most. We had a great first conversation and then a really nice meeting where I met Karen. I felt great about them after our meeting and we booked each other for their October wedding.

I  realize with this attitude I won’t be shooting 6 weddings a month for a thousand each and I really don’t want to. What I am and will be doing is one or two a month for for 3k to 5k  and working with people I want to spend time with and who also want to work with me. Maybe I sound like an ass, but I have worked very hard for a long time to find this sweet spot.

I am confident I can shoot anyone, but I can’t shoot for everyone. My clients know who they are and what’s more important is I know who they are and we like it like that. They are looking for special pictures and I am looking for special people.

I saw Beau as beautiful and talented. We will see great things from him. An exceptional guitarist  and self taught; I know the kind of dedication that takes. I felt honored he allowed me to see him so that I may document this moment, a passing of a mile stone, his senior year, for all in his world to remember.

Gulp Gulp I always get choked up getting to see people in their stages.

Beau’s pictures are some of my favorites so far and I know, I say that about all the boys.

We ate a very late dinner at the Farallon restaurant and it was one of the most amazing meals of our lives. I can still taste it.

So when I saw the job for our local chamber manager position advertised I leapt at it. Seems like it would be a great fit. I am a transplant like most here and I know the area very well. My background in marketing and the internet helps.  They are flexible about my weddings schedule and my photography business. My commute will be by bicycle about 2 miles west. I applied in late May and I start in mid August.  I  am excited about it because I don’t have to take a booking if it feels cheesy over controlled or wrong. I can’t apologize for saying I don’t want to work for people who have never seen my work and want to negotiate rates. There are so many mediocre wedding photographers out there who will shoot a wedding for cheap cheap cheap, granted it looks cheap cheap cheap to me, but I have a trained eye. Some people don’t know the difference between good photography and great photography anyway, they are just price shopping and that’s ok. I can joyfully say I don’t have play that bit.  I don’t have to change my style or my rates because I am desperate to pay the bills. I am creatively free and grateful for it.

What I have learned about marriage is getting married isn’t a marriage, it’s a party. Just like being in love with an infant, so that when they are unruly teenagers we won’t kill them, the beginning of a relationship serves the same purpose. Remembering the beginning ; long term marriages seem to have a way of tainting one’s today’s with yesterday’s injuries. Hearing marriage vows keeps it fresh, new and real for me. It also causes me to reflect.

I photograph weddings and the odd thing about being behind my camera is my ears hear everything. I hear every word of their vows. Every word hits me in my gut. Whether the couple being married is taking the the vows that I am hearing seriously,  matters not,  I am taking them very seriously. My marriage is serious business to me, a whole life,  family, trajectory of many lives hang in the balance. Marriage is not for the weak or faint of heart.  The longer I am married I come to understand for me marriage is a sacred covenant not a contract. That was the message I took away from this wedding. Even though I already know it on some level, sometimes I forget it. Sometimes I feel like it’s a contract that can be renegotiated or adjusted or absolved.

Shirley, who was there in my early married life and Yoda to me, said “Marriage is made everyday Kim. One day at a time.” I know a little today what that means.  I speak for me only, because I am by nature stubborn and a flawed human being, I look at my marriage as my sacred spiritual work.  One day at a time, it  demands  I grow up just a little more that I love a little  more, that I change a little more. Thank God I know Love to be a verb, just like faith without works is dead, so is love without right action, because when I want to move to my quiet little cottage on the coast I am shown one more time there is something I must work on and change in myself. At the end of the day I find, it begins and ends with me and it is a lesson I have to keep learning.

Once when I was having a moment where I thought my husband wasn’t taking this marriage work as seriously  as I was, I asked him. ” Honey is this a  marriage of convenience for  you?” He laughed hard and loud, and said with a big smile “There isn’t anything convenient about it.”  Now that may sound bad, but I took it as a  great sign. He’s working too and he wouldn’t if it didn’t matter to him. We both are in it one day at a time.

Photographing Weddings is good for me and my  marriage.

That song became the anthem in which I lived the rest of my childhood by. She was gone by 1972, my grandmother, and still missed deeply to this day. Yesterday was her birthday. I never forget it and yesterday my nephew’s  daughter was born. I have never met him or spoken to him, he found me a few days ago, to my great joy and to tell me they were expecting. His daughter was born yesterday. The same day as her great great grandmother Lucille.

After Lucille died we moved ten or so blocks over to Irving and 44th with my mom. She had to work  all of the time to support the 3 of us and my level of  freedom expanded. I ran every block. I ran into trouble, granted, it’s a big rough city, but I took mass transit at 9 and beyond,  alone where ever I wanted. I learned to dodge trouble, perverts and to get around. It gave me enough confidence to live and travel around New York City and Paris when I was just 18. The Zoo, Sutro Heights, Ocean Beach, The Warf, Golden Gate Park, Lake Merced,  The Cliff House all were my backyard. The other day, while I was in the city shooting for the Knot’s party at the Academy of Sciences, I went back to my old neighborhood. Both of my old homes are still there. Only the color of the paint has changed.

A day later I shot an engagement session up on Sutro Heights,  where as a child, I had climbed the cliffs around it and the ruins of Sutro Baths. I took this photo for me and I set my aperture at 22 on purpose. I wanted to see all of it. Now it sits on my desk top and I know I have a very big story to tell. Someday.

A view of Ocean Beach, The Sunset District, Daly City and Beyond from Sutro Heights

Ian and I have 5 children. Our oldest is almost 25 years old. I started young, 21 and at times I don’t look 46, but man this Spring, I was feeling it. We haven’t had a trip alone in a good while.  We decided on a road trip this spring to the Monterey Bay aquarium and to the Hearst Castle or the Ranch as Hearst himself called it.  Being lovers of art, beautiful imagery and all underwater scenery it was a good choice. I was raised in the sunset district of SF and I miss the ocean all the time. We have never been south of Carmel by car and I have always wanted to the see Big Sur. I carry a crappy camera with me in my purse, too affraid to ruin my good portrait cameras and I reach for my camera often. We decided on this area for our love of food sealife and seeking warmer weather. We didn’t get it, it was cold and it rained, but it was beautiful.  Ian is a builder and Hearst Castle was eye candy. We could have stayed there for days. What a very special place. They offer 6 tours, we took 2.

I have made some pictures of the children while we watch our movies. What has worked for me as a creative is to step way from the thing I am working on constantly. I bounce between painting, writing, house duties and photography. Granted it does cause a rust for about 5 minutes which is quickly steamed out by the pent up energy of the pressure cooker of wanting to create. I consciously stepped away from bookings for the last 2 months to focus on marketing and other aspects of my business and creative life. I am glad I did, I feel the passion and excitement of creativity and I can’t wait to get at making pictures again. Here are few from this week.

One of my many muses

lala

Freda

That face

he's planning something

through the plant

little muse

I like it in Black and White

I see you seeing me.

poached egg on toasted whole wheat sourdough, our favorite.

Mike

trying to watch my show.

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