Considering Lilies

As I walked around Salt Lake today I was just so excited because it was/is spring and warm and I didn't need a jacket and I could wear sandals! Seriously! It was the perfect day....
But as I wandered the city, and walked across temple square I had to stop and stand for a moment.
It was quiet and warm. The air smelled of cherry blossoms and the color was astounding and I couldn't take the smile off my face.

"Consider the lilies of the field".

One of my favorite song lyrics came to mind and as I stood in all that perfect  setting it simply hit me, once again, that often times in life we find ourselves in winter.
It gets cold, dark, and stagnant.
The winds blow and sometimes you feel buried under foot after foot of heavy, wet, snow.
But what I, and we, often forget is that just because there are clouds doesn't mean that there is no sun.  And just because it's frozen now, doesn't mean it won't warm up and be spring.
Here in Utah, in our little desert, it takes all that snow to make those flowers bloom. They desperately need the moisture it provides.
When we are in trials it can seem hard to remember that they won't last forever, and sometimes it seems that if one more person tells you that "it will all be alright in the end, you'll see" you'll explode. But the thing is, it WILL be alright. It WILL end. The snow melts, the clouds go away, spring arrives, and we remember that winter is only one part of the year.
And most importantly.  We are not alone.  God will not leave us. Just as he clothes those beautiful flowers, he will clothe us.
"Consider the lilies of the field,
How they grow, how they grow.
Consider the birds in the sky,
How they fly, how they fly....
He clothes the lilies of the field.
He feeds the birds of the sky.
He clothes the lilies of the field,
He feeds the lambs in His fold,
And He will heal those who trust Him,
And make their hearts as gold."
(Lyrics from Consider the Lilies)

Time Simply Flies

I've always hated the question "Where do you see yourself in five years?"  because most of the time I can't even see where I'll be in five days, sometimes not even five minutes.  Life changes and moves so fast and suddenly you're ninety looking back and wondering where time went.  Or it's nine o'clock at night and you're wondering where the day went.  They say that time flies when you're having fun... but I think time just flies.

Sometimes I pause and I think about how crazy it is that suddenly I've been home from Australia for 8 months and in two I'll be leaving to serve the Lord for 18.  It seems just yesterday I was walking down the board walk in Geelong, but at the same time, it's an eternity ago.  I said I wasn't the same person who left when I came home from Australia, but now I'm also not the same person who came back.  

I have grown so much these last few months.    

It has been wonderful and crazy.  I have made friends, lost friends, broken down, and grown stronger, and I have recognized the importance of knowing myself.  

I might not know where I'll be going, but I know where I am.

And in the scope of time...  That's what I think matters.

Moments and Memories

We never knew we were making memories.  We just knew we were having fun.

As a child I knew my four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction from winter.  Known for having the best on earth, people travel from all over the world to experience Utah’s snow, but any child in Utah will tell you that the “perfect snow” isn’t that ski powder, and it lasts only for a moment.  That wet, sticky, wonderful cold that we all think of when we see snowball fights and snowmen, lasts only for a day, and falls only a few times a year.  Once it stops snowing, the cold sets in, and the dry snow turns to ice, slush, and powder, and the moments of today turn to the memories of tomorrow.

The same is for any moment in our lives.  Life doesn’t happen in minutes.  It happens in moments.  I began taking pictures fifteen months ago when I lost my childhood best friend and realized that in fourteen years, I had less than ten pictures of him.  Those moments, like that “perfect snow” crystalized and became memories.   But it shouldn’t take the loss of a loved one to realize that, because by then it’s too late.  In “Moments and Memories” I document a “perfect snow” day as it happens, capturing those instants so that when the time come, they are just as frozen as the air and snow that gave birth to them.

(There are over 50 photos in the final collection of this project but I have just included a few)

This project started out as a deep look on depression with technology.  I had the scenes planned out, the set put together, and I was simply waiting for these two to come home and be my models.  

When they came home we got talking and laughing because of how stressed we all were and how we simply wanted to just go out and play in the snow as it was a perfect snow day.  I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about my photography project and threw out that I wanted to go on a snow photograph adventure and that if they wanted to join they could.

This book is the adventured that followed that.  

But the special thing about these photos is that they reminded me why I love taking pictures and why I do it.  In the last 15 months I have taken more than 20,000 photos, and less than 1,000 of those were planned out photos that I staged and took with forethought.  As I took these I was reminded that I take photos to capture the soul and the memory, not the smile and perfection.  That’s not what makes photography special. 

And now, even when their footprints in the snow are covered or melted, and someday we all move on to different colleges, we still have the memory.  We still have that moment.

And that, it what photography is about.

My Adventure Buddy

I may or may not have fallen for my brothers complete charm and take way  too many pictures of him but my favorite thing to do is match the pictures to a quote that inspired them.  

These are some of my favorites.

Quote Reminder

Overcoming Fear in an Aussie Halloween

This week was pretty exciting since I went to a YSA camp weekend in Apollo Bay which is on the Great Ocean Road (an extremely famous coast line).  Friday started out pretty nice with it being really warm and sunny so Clare, Tim and I (who were carpooling) stopped and swam in the ocean for a few hours before heading to camp.  Once we got to camp we started setting up camp and getting the Scare Walk ready for when the others came. 

They don’t really do Halloween here, it’s more a light fad, so the Scare Walk was the extent of my Halloween activities. 

We started the walk at about 10:30 at night and we used a path that went from our camp site down to the beach.  We had people, me being one, who were strategically placed down the path to freak people out.  I got one girl really good.  :D  Once we got to the beach we then played capture the flag for a while before having to head back to camp since it was starting to rain.

The storm hit at about midnight.  And OH WOW.  It was so bad that a group of us huddled in the club house (a little shelter building at the camp site with a fire place.  It was open on one side so all it did was shelter from the rain, not the cold or wind) and played cards until 2:30 when we got in trouble.  It was massive amounts of fun though.  They had never heard of Slap Jack!  Don’t worry.  I converted them.  :D

The storm lasted all night long and after we had to get up and tie the tents down extra firmly since two blew off, our tent leaked and every time the wind blew water rained from the roof to our heads.  :D  I got about an hour and a half to two hours of sleep….

The next day we went kayaking down the river that we were camped on to the ocean which was EPIC.  I KAYAKED to the ocean.  :D  Once we made it to the surf we left our shoes and paddles on the shore and then we took the kayaks, they were sit on top, out to where the waves were and we would hop on them and ride them into shore like a body board. 

Well my motto right now is “overcoming fears” since it’s becoming a big problem in my life.  I get really fixated on little things that freak me out and I freeze up or start having panic attacks.  One of my biggest fears is being thrown into water or getting water on my face unexpectedly.  I’m fine with going in deep or jumping off the diving board or what not if I decide to do it.  However if I lose control of that I start to panic.  For example, the last time I went boating and they put me on a tube I started hyperventilating because it freaked me out that I didn’t know when I was going to get thrown. 

Anyway…. That was a long explanation to where this is going…  I was trying to face fears this weekend so they convinced me to do the kayak/body board thing which was freaking me out since the waves were throwing us all over the place.  Well I jumped on the kayak and got NAILED by this huge wave that threw me off the kayak, away from the kayak and my buddies, and into a massive pile of rocks that we didn’t know were there.  Needless to say that fear is still being worked on and now I have some epic bruises.  :D

Rose By Any Other Name

This weekend we went to the Werribee Mansion Park again for the Rose Garden opening which was BEAUTIFUL!  I have so many pictures of roses now!  :P

The best part though was Zach figured out how to smell the roses so he was walking around doing over exaggerated sniffs and then saying “ahh.”  Well he found this one rose that was just slightly taller than him that he wanted to sniff so he started pulling it down to his face to smell only to discover that it was full of rain water.  It splashed all over his face and nose and he freaked out!  The best part was though I just so happened to be trying to take a picture of him with the shutter button down on my phone so I caught the entire sequence on camera! 

It’s so weird to think that it is spring here.  My brain is wigging out whenever they start talking about doing a picnic or a beach day for Christmas and how we’ll be roasting in January when it’s over 100 degrees every day.  It’s going to be so fun but so weird!