Fadedwords

This has been a week that has shown me how possible it is for me to actually use my photography to make enough money to horseback ride.  Or have a little extra left over to buy a dvd occasionally.  The photographs I took at the horse show were incredibly well received.  Everyone who has seen them has told me how good they are.  Several people have expressed interest in buying them; enough so that I have developed a price list to have on hand just in case.  I have been so flattered by the things people have said.

Best of all?  Someone is actually buying one!  Granted, it’s a friend.  It’s also important to consider the fact that this friend is an artist, and she told me it’s one of the best photographs she has ever seen.  I was astonished by that feedback!

I’m hoping that I’m able to turn this into something.  If I could sell just 10 4×6 prints, or 4 CDs of pictures I would get nearly enough for one riding lesson.  I would really love it if I could turn this in to something that helped me out and made it so I didn’t have to worry every month about how I was going to afford groceries.

It’s been a good week, because I’ve seen potential and hope.

Saturday I took photos for my friend Bre, who is expecting her second baby in April.  We had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, and I got to practice this type of photography one more time:

I can’t post a link to that one, as the gallery is password protected and I only asked Bre if I could use the photos in a portfolio.  I can say that I am incredibly proud of how all of the photos turned out.

After I finished at Bre’s, I went to a barrel show that was hosted at the barn I ride at.  It was my first time photographing any sort of equestrian event, and when I got home I was so proud of the images I had captured.  I used all manual settings, and did no post processing other than cropping.

You can see all the photos from this HERE.  I was really upset yesterday because I got to the farm and realized that my memory card was still in my laptop at the house.  I had to leave, go to CVS, and get a new one.  I ended up missing Elizabeth, my instructor, riding.

Then today there was a second day of barrel showing at the farm.  Today I managed to remember everything I needed, and saw Elizabeth ride Missy!

You can see all the photos from today HERE.

I’m really proud of how the barrel show pictures turned out.  I did a lot of research about what settings I would need to use, because I knew I couldn’t just put it on an automatic mode and get crisp pictures.  I really think I did well at achieving crisp, clear images of something that is very hard to capture.  A good barrel horse can get ’round in 15-18 seconds, so you can imagine what that means for snapping a clear photo!

One day, maybe, I will be able to work events like this and get paid a little bit.  At least that’s the goal, once I’ve practiced and feel comfortable.

It’s been a productive morning.  I finished my Zoo album.  I realize I went to the Zoo 9 months ago, but I had several other projects that had a deadline!

Click on the image to visit the album!

I also took the time to take photos of my Wrightsville Beach 2009 album that I finished several weeks ago…

Again, click on the picture to go see all of the photos of the album.

I have several projects that I need to start working on or finish up now, including finishing Merlin’s last year album and starting this year’s.  I want to do an album that will house all my horseback riding photographs from when I was a teenager until now.

I’m tossing around the idea of doing a portfolio of all of my photography.  I would use this as I move toward a place where I will start charging a fee to do portraits for people.  Still not entirely sure what I need to do or how to do it.  We’ll see.

In other news?  It snowed again last night!  I woke up to this:

I didn’t take many photos but you can click on that picture to see all of them.  Thankfully this snowfall did not come with 2 inches of ice on top of it.  I should have no problem getting out and doing things this weekend, and we shouldn’t lose any more school days.  I wish that it hadn’t snowed though; I really wanted to ride this weekend.

Last week I gained 4.4 pounds.  I was astonished when I got on the scale and saw that; I haven’t gained that much in a week since I started WW.  I was incredibly upset about it, and couldn’t understand what on Earth I had done to cause such a tremendous jump in my weight.  I had been working really hard to be on track, because I have set a goal to get to 185 by the time I go to Seattle with Bethany.  This is a bit more than 15 pounds, based upon where my weight was when I made the goal.

I was still unable to work out this week due to my back.  The doctor told me to give it two weeks to get the swelling down completely.  I worked hard to stay on track with food though, but I honestly didn’t think I’d see much of a loss.  I was once again astonished because I lost 6.8 pounds.  I’ve never lost that much in a week, mainly because it’s bad to do that under normal circumstances.  This week was somewhat different because most of that weight is simply fading away from the steroid injection.  I’m still really proud because it means I lost 2.4 pounds of real weight this week.  I am 19 pounds from where I want to be, and I am feeling good enough to work out finally.  I’ll be taking it easy (no worries Mom!), but I do want to try to do at least 2 days this week.  I’ll do more if I’m feeling up to it.

In other news…

Ever since I moved to this area, I drive by this field quite often.  It’s very large, has a pond, and two really gorgeous horses.  I have been trying/waiting to get a photo early in the morning of the horses standing beside the pond, with a reflection in the water.  It took me 3 years, but I finally got it…

You can see all of the photos I took this morning HERE.

The past two days have been filled with photography.  On Monday the plan had been to go to Lake Mattamuskeet, however the first set of directions I got were wrong and it ended up being too far away.  So we decided to head to Yates Mill Pond.

I had never been to Yates Mill before, but I absolutely fell in love with it.  There are nature trails, the mill, the waterfall… just beautiful.  I can’t wait to go back.  You can see all the pictures from that day HERE.

We decided to head to Lake Mattamuskeet yesterday.  It was a three hour drive, but as it turns out it was completely worth it.

Hundreds of thousands of tundra swan come here in the winter, along with thousands of other species of birds.  When we were first driving in to the refuge, a bald eagle flew over our car.  I’m so disappointed that my camera wasn’t out and ready, so there is no photograph of that.  He was beautiful though.  We saw lots of birds and enjoyed the park a great deal.  It was very windy though, and very cold.  I’m looking forward to going back again, hopefully to see some loons and another eagle.  You can see all the pictures from Lake Mattamuskeet HERE.