Growing Up

I look at this picture and the first thing I think is,

"Where did my babies go?"

They are kids now. Running, laughing, jumping, squealing kids. Kids who ran all over the park chasing ducks. Kids who hopped up on the bench to look at the ducks (they felt safer there). And kids who are so absolutely special to me that I tear up every time I think about how much I love and cherish them. My kids. Growing up so fast already. They mean everything to me. Everything.

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So tomorrow I have a photo shoot. My third one of the fall season. The first two have been cancelled due to rain. So if the weather holds, this will actually be the first one. I had two areas that I wanted to scout out today. Areas that I know well but I wanted to check on the fall colors and the leaves. Our family loves this little park and it was such a nice day today, we spent the afternoon there. We fed the ducks and played at the playground.

I saw three photographers there today. The first one was taking pictures of the beautiful sunlit trees and the other two were walking around with families. It was interesting to see the photographers at work. My favorite scene was when the photographer had the family of four throw leaves into the air. That created a lot of spontaneous laughter. It seemed to really lighten everything up. I'm excited for my shoot tomorrow. Let's pray the weather holds because by tomorrow afternoon, we are looking at rain for the next seven days.

Also I want to add a little tid bit of a story to tonight's journal because it really meant something to me today. My ultra fab super phenom friend and I were walking out of our spin class today and an older man that takes our class came walking up to me with a photograph in his hand and a huge smile on his face. He and I have talked photography several times in the past few months. The conversation began the day when I was trying to photograph the spinning wheel of my bike with a slow shudder speed before class. He asked if I was a photographer. I said no, just an aspiring one and told him about blipfoto. He mentioned that he used to dabble in photography but had kind of given it up. So today he approached me with a photograph that he had taken over the summer.

"I brought this photograph to the gym because I wanted to show it to you"
(Photo of a whale doing a backflip at Sea World)

"Oh wow, this is incredible"

"Yeah, I upped my saturation a bit and worked on the focus. I'm really proud of it"

"You should be, look how you captured that splash"

"And I wanted to thank you for inspiring me to take up photography again"

"Really? I inspired you??"

"Yes, you did and thank you. I'm having a ball with it"

"Wow, thank you. That means a lot. Thank you"

My friend "Yeah, she's inspiring all of us with her photography these days!!!"

I have to say, I walked away from that conversation with a little skip in my step. To know that I inspired someone just by taking the time to have short little conversations about photography before my workout classes. That is so cool. Because I get very inspired by people but to know that I inspired someone else.....well that was just cool.