I know, kind of a random and weird title there…it will shortly make some sense…I hope…LOL
Over the last 8-9 months or so, Tauro Photography has been put on the back-burner while I took the time to work on some different projects. I was also doing some personal soul searching about whether I wanted to continue with the photography game (not personally, just professionally). I was just a bit burnt out last year. Honestly, when I announced my hiatus last year, I was so tempted to say say “closing” instead of “on a break”. Because I was really thinking I was ready to move onto something else.
Can I just say…I am so glad I left things open because after about 4 months, I realized that I was truly missing the kids! Not mine, but YOURS. Seriously, yours are better behaved and cleaner than mine…okay, just kidding on that one (I am sure I just see your kids at their cleanest). BUT I adore photographing kids and families, and now I know for sure I could never totally stop doing that. However, obviously something was broke, and I have been spending a ton of time in my head, talking to other people and photographers, as well as writing a ton of lists (you know – pros and cons, who am I, goals, what do I want to do with my life – those kind of things) to figure things all out. I have gone on retreats, bored my husband and pretty much have been obsessing about it all (first clue, that I wasn’t ready to stop photography…couldn’t bring myself to stop thinking, talking and generally annoying everyone about it).
And I am very happy to say I am almost ready to get things going again…I plan to launch in the fall, but I have some plans to start SOME projects over the summer too. This summer is going to be awesome – not only with some great photography projects to ramp up to a grand reopening in September, but also because I have a ton of plans with my own kids (its not all photography related though…they would mutiny if that were the case).
I love summer and I love kids and I love popsicles <— enter random segue way so my title makes some kind of sense. Well not so random, because since I am being a little vulnerable here, why not go all the way…
I recently dug through some old and well loved images that have been languishing on my hard drive and thought I would share a set here. These are of my youngest daughter when she was 20 months or so. She has ALWAYS been such a character and I have some of the most hilarious photos and videos of this kid. She is now a very serious/goofy (depends if its just us, which means serious, or friends, which definitely means crazy goofy) and grown up 12 year old, but still very much full of personality.
However, these images are terrible – in quality that is. They were severely underexposed, taken on one of my oldest digital cameras (long before they were as great as they are now). Honestly, had there not been something I just loved about them, I would have deleted them. BUT I did love them, as imperfect as they are (see, title came full circle right there). Do you have photos or images or art or something that is not perfect technically, but oh so perfect in how it makes you feel? I know for sure you do. These are just one example of mine (you can be sure…I am imperfect pretty much all of the time, so I guess I better embrace it!)
Here we go – summer and popsicles and growing up and imperfection…including techicolour grass (I guess I could have fixed that up for this post, but heck, I am just going to own my crazy grass!)
This is her from summer 2012. She looks very similar to this still, except she also now has braces (which she had put on the week before Halloween…ask me how happy she was about THAT…I pretty much have not heard the end of it LOL). BUT she has already lost those cute fangs you can see here, so they are doing their job. She is sorely overdue for her own feature portrait session, so that will be yet another awesome and fun project for this summer (we are planning it already). Time flies people…first they are babies cutely eating pink popsicles in the backyard…suddenly they are mouthy tweens, full of attitude, silliness and big kid dreams. And cell phones…they all have cell phones already. Ask me how happy she is that HERS is a hand-me-down flip phone from her brother (even less happy than the braces before halloween!)
(yes, nothing techicolour or weirdly toned or noisy about this image – both she and I have come a long way baby!)
by Julie Tauro