AVP 2015 Year in review And Other Stuff

Wow, what a year. It has been an amazing year professionally. I’m so thankful for all of my clients for trusting me to document your lives and I’m so thankful to have fallen into (and in love with) shooting stock photography. I started shooting stock photography full force in 2014 and it was the best year ever. Anyway, I don’t feel like getting into all of my achievements and failures from 2015, but I do want to share some things that have been going on in my world lately and some things that have been going on for forever. I’ll spare you the novel here now, but if you care to read about it, please scroll to the bottom to read the rest. WARNING: It might be long.

How did I choose images for a year in review? I have no idea, I just started sifting through my work and I picked images that made me feel something.

Hey! You made it!! HAHA! Okay here it goes! Some of you may follow me on Facebook and know that my cat “Walter the cat” is pretty much all I post pictures of anymore. Well, it’s not that I have nothing to post, it’s just that I don’t know what to post. You see, I have this problem where I think that my work is mediocre. I don’t hate my work and sometimes I will feel proud of my work, but the pride usually comes from feeling confident that I did my best and produced images that will make my clients happy. When it comes down to it though, I truly think my work sucks. I feel like some people are born with natural talent and others (me) have to work hard to become talented. I (maybe) feel a strong like towards about a dozen images that I’ve taken in my entire life. That’s the sad truth. For a while I thought that my issues with my work were superficial. Perhaps I was comparing myself to other photographers out there. Or maybe my posts on social media didn’t yield the attention that I was hoping for resulting in low self confidence. Then I took a step back and decided that I didn’t like my images because I had seen them before. It’s like being the author of a book. Who has the better experience, the writer or the reader? Wouldn’t you think it’s the reader? Where everything is new and they don’t know how the story will unfold? It’s exciting to be the reader. For the writer, their eyes are tired and they probably never want to lay eyes on the book again. That’s my guess, anyway. My pictures have been looked at by my eyes before. Am I just over them? Could that be it? I don’t know, to be honest, but all I know is that this feeling sucks.

I’m LOST!!! For a few years now I’ve been trying to shoot more documentary. My slogan (if I even have one) is “Document Your Life!” Well, in all honestly, I think only 5% of my images can even pass for documentary. Shooting documentary is easier said than done. It’s really hard to shoot families this way. Not all families can go about their business without direction from me. I’m not an assertive person, so giving direction is super hard for me, but I’ll give it if I have to. Sometimes families seem super comfortable in front of the camera but won’t interact with each other. It’s a struggle I tell you!!! The hardest thing for me is to shoot a family that doesn’t interact or even touch each other much. I’ve had shoots where the parents just stand there and watch their kids play. I don’t want to say “get in there and play with your kids” because that might not be who they are. But what do I do? I can’t just produce images that tell that story because the client will not be happy. So here is where I’m lost. I want to keep doing what I’m doing but I don’t want to keep feeling what I’m feeling. Feelings of inadequacy, of being uninspired, of discontent. It’s ALL ME! Not my clients, ME! I am lost and this isn’t the first time this has happened. I lose my way so often it’s made me want to throw in the towel and crawl into a hole. So what I am trying to figure out right now is how to find my way again which means there are going to be some changes to AVP. I wish I could tell you what they are, but I still haven’t figured it out yet. All I know is that I love my clients, I love shooting stock photography and I love cats.

So, as you can see, I have issues that run deeper than photography. I saw a therapist once a year or so ago and she told me that I was “self deprecating”. I truly like myself, I do, but I have major self worth issues. Charging for photo shoots has been the HARDEST thing for me in this business. I don’t feel like I deserve your money. I have issues with money too. I’ve always had money struggles. I’ve never been taught how to manage money and growing up we didn’t have much money, so charging money for my services feels terrible because I automatically assume that money is sparse in your world too. It wasn’t until I changed my way of thinking and substituted “they are paying me for photography” for “they are paying for my time away from my kids” because my self worth issues can’t touch my kids. Every now and then I let the self worth creep in and it truly makes running this business hard. I spent most of my life punching into a time clock. Such a different feeling and so much easier. I think that is why stock photography has won me over so much. I get paid for my pictures through a third party which makes things so much more comfortable for me.

2015 has been tough for me personally. It really boils down to balance. There is very little, but for the most part, I was managing okay until recently. The mere fact that I was able to make time for this ginormous blog post is such an achievement. Of course there is still a sink full of dishes that will just need to be washed in the morning. So, making time for this has given up time for that, and that’s okay (until I wake up tomorrow, see the mess, and curse myself). Well, I’ve entered that stage of life where my parents are old and sick and need to be cared for. Just before Christmas my dad wasn’t doing well and the doctors didn’t give us much hope. Thankfully he has pulled through but he is still not well. After weeks in the hospital he can finally get up and walk around a bit, but not without effort. It seems like he’s getting stronger everyday, though and that is promising. My mother has been on dialysis for over 5 years. I’ve been driving her there and picking her up 3 times a week. She no longer has a license and I have to take her everywhere. I signed her up for Dial A Ride but, unfortunately her one experience with them was not good for her and she doesn’t seem to give second chances. Anyway, I can go on and on about my mother but what it boils down to is this: I am spending HOURS taking care of my parents and I no longer have time for myself. My days consist of taking care of my children, volunteering at their school, taking care of my parents, taking care of my work/clients, taking care of my not so clean and overly neglected house, and then if there is some energy left, I will watch tv or read a book late at night. I will make time for a run every now and then, but I’m not getting consistent exercise and that just makes me sad. So yes, I AM SAD. I am sad that my Christmas card this year was a crappy Costco one that I threw together in 5 minutes with an image that all of Facebook had seen before because I didn’t have time to take a new image. I am sad that I have personal projects that I want to so very badly start but I can’t find the time. I am sad that I have barely edited any family pictures from 2015 and they are all just sitting on my hard drive collecting dust. I am sad that I have 9 years of photo books of my family pictures to be made and no time to make them. I am sad that I’ve been getting sick a lot with my Crohn’s disease because of stress. I am sad that my parents and in laws are both not doing well. I’m sad that I’ve been wearing a $350 mouth guard at night for 2 years now and my teeth still have sensitivity from all of the grinding and clenching I do while I’m asleep. I AM SAD that I felt the need to write this in a blog post for the world to see (or just my very small audience). I AM SAD and things have got to change.

I’m okay with change. What I’m not okay with is asking for help. I don’t know how to do it. I barely ask my kids for help with anything. They are capable. In the summer I have them do chores and earn an allowance, but during the school year, I just let them focus on school, sports and themselves. Recently it took everything out of me to ask my siblings for help with my parents. They live about an hour or so away. It went over well with one of them at least and I was able to have ONE free day with my family over Christmas break. I felt guilty and that made my free day not so free. Sometimes I get offerings of help from friends but for some reason I have a really hard time accepting help, so I will turn them down. Oh well, just one more thing about ME that I need to fix.

As I begin to nod off here (as I am sure you are too by this boring whine fest) I just need to close with one thing. The most important thing in the world to me is my family. Right now, I feel like I am failing them. My children will talk to me and I will just stare right through them nodding and pretending to listen while I am really just thinking about the million things that I have to do and the million things that I want to do. Sometimes I will just shut them down when they start talking by telling them that I have a lot on my mind and I can’t quite listen to them. I suppose that is fairer than pretending to listen and them believing that I was listening. They are growing so fast and my almost 10 year old will soon become a teenager and I will no longer have this time back to actually listen to what she is telling me. Tonight I made an effort to listen and I was astounded by what an amazing human she is. All it took was a few minutes of listening to realize that. Of course, I thought she was amazing already, but tonight was different. It truly seeped in and I was completely enchanted by her. How sad that I’ve missed hundreds of opportunities to feel this way. Something has got to change and I know that it will have to start with ME.

Thanks for reading!

xo
Angie