In my hunt for models for my Daughters of the King series, I reached out to youth leaders from my church and was ultimately led to Haylie. When I learned that Haylie was a dancer, I did a little happy tango on the inside. When I found out she was a classically trained ballerina, it was as if the entire Radio City Rockettes corp was doing the can can in my heart. 

As a six year old in a pretty pink skirt and rhinestone leotard attending my very first ballet class, I gained a deep love for dance that took me through fifteen wonderful years and through every stage of life one experiences between the ages of six and twenty-one. Dance became a monumental aspect of my life that has and will always enthrall and inspire me. 

And so it was with all the effort I could muster that I anxiously waited until the next upcoming Saturday when I could finally meet up with Haylie. It was a beautiful late autumn day in Boston as we walked from Haylie's dorm on Beacon Street down to the Charles River Esplanade. On our walk, I learned just how much dance meant to Haylie, as she told me how she had left her family behind in California to pursue her dreams here in Boston. To make this tale even more incredible, she is not even in high school yet!

But that is the magical thing about having something to be passionate about, I have found. It gives us the strength to do things we never thought we were even capable of attempting!

Over the years, it has become pretty clear that photography is something I have grown very passionate about. Sometimes I like to think that as dance was slowly pushed out of my life, photography came in to fill in this space my heart knew was missing inside. So you can imagine the amount of joy I felt as I spent the afternoon remembering all the many happy experiences from my childhood. Those times where I could pretend I was a fairy, or a princess, or whatever my heart wanted to be, so long as I had ballet slippers on my feet and a pretty pink skirt around my waist.

Photographing Hayley, and seeing the passion in her eyes and in her every movement, was like being that child all over again, exploring creative expression and feeling like I could be anything I wanted to be. 

I believe that is why photography has come to be the intrinsic facet of my life that it is today. With photography I can create anything, do anything, and therefore be anything. Inspiration and creativity, in whatever form they come in, are what makes me feel the most alive and what provide the strongest sense of passion and happiness in my life.

So twenty years from now, it matters not whether or not photography is the source of creative expression I turn to. It only matters that I have something to be passionate about and that I can pursue that with everything I have and with everything I love. Until that time comes, I will pursue this happiness that I have found with all my soul and with every last piece my heart has to give.

There is something special about sharing a piece of art that you have spent your love and many many hours on. It is even more special when what you have decided to share also happens to feature someone you love very much as the subject of the piece. 

"Let Your Light So Shine", my piece for the Young Woman value Good Works:

When I first set out on this adventure of creating pieces depicting each of the Young Women Values, I planned out my images over a period of many many months. I decided on the various settings. How many I wanted to be taken indoors, how many outdoors. What props I would use and the symbolism they would carry. And while I knew I wanted to have a diverse group of girls, I also knew that one of those girls had to be my youngest sister Chloë.

Chloë has played a very important role in my journey from being JUST a "photographer" to becoming who I am at today: an artist. She has been my muse from the beginning, and I think throughout all these years I may have convinced her, if only slightly, that she actually enjoys modeling. 

Now, as I have mentioned in previous posts, one of the most important aspects of this Young Women Values series is incorporating the subjects' cultures into my pieces. But how do you incorporate the culture of an incredible little girl who has lived in eight different houses in four countries, all before she even turned twelve?

As I thought about it and puzzled over it, I decided there was a place my family has always called home, where we could always return to after every adventure: Grandma and Grandpa's house. Or as we all like to call it, Paradise. With the location decided, the day quickly came where I could finally take a photo I had been waiting almost two years to take. We grabbed some miscellaneous lamps from around the house, extensions cords, and all the necessary camera equipment, and made our way to the big hill at the end of Grandpa's runway. My cousin's wife Kenna, of Billi Billi Productions, ran around my sister holding up lights here, and flicking skirts there.

Now, the scripture for Good Works is:

 14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

I had envisioned a girl looking almost as if she were this candle on a hillside, shining for everyone around her to see. Chloë has grown into a compassionate young woman and has always been able to be kind and create friendships with anyone she encounters, so I knew she would be the perfect representative for this value. More literally symbolic, she is wearing a yellow dress, the color for Good Works, and, combined with her blonde hair, I knew she would stand out just as a candle would against the darkening sky behind her.

There's not much more symbolism to this, as I wanted to keep it simple and let the beautiful sky and subject speak for themselves.

I love you miss Chloë. You will always be my favorite person to shoot, not just because of the sweetness you bring to each photo we create together, but also, and more importantly, because of the friendship and love that has grown between us during our shoots. You will always be my little baby sister, and I am grateful for that everyday! Keep shining. :)

** I'd like to thank Robert Cornelius and Stephen Sitton for providing me with some very valuable second opinions and critiques on this piece. You can see their work here and here. I'd also like to thank Kenna with Billi Billi Photography, who ran around flinging skirts and holding lighting equipment like a pro. You can see her work here. I'd be stuck with a significantly less beautiful piece if it weren't for everyone who helped out, so thank you times a million all of you!** 

Recently I made the (possibly ill-conceived) decision to revisit my piece Virtueand completely rework this image I had taken over two years ago. This was kind of a big deal for me. When I first ventured into the realms of photoshop and image editing, I made a rule for myself that I would never go back and re-edit an old image for one reason: growth.

I first got Photoshop as a gift from my cousin years and years ago. I immediately made a concerted effort to watch every single tutorial and read every forum relating to Photoshop the internet had to offer.

Spoiler alert: there's a lot.

My efforts were rewarded, however, as I began to see improvement, and found myself enjoying photography more and more as time went on. I also found it incredibly tempting to go back and re-edit photos I had taken months and even years previous. Photography has been a hobby of mine since my family and I moved to India while I was in high school, and I had a lot of really interesting photos that I was sorely tempted to go back and "fix" with my improving talent.

I will readily admit that am a perfectionist, to a fault, and I realized that allowing myself to rework old photos could quickly lead me into a black hole of "edit, learn something new, rework, and repeat". So I forced myself to recognize that improvement and growth comes from looking forward and trying new things, and definitely not from trying the same thing over and over again. Of course, I'm saying this about a month after I published three reworks of Integrity... But, unlike with Virtue, though, which I was absolutely in LOVE with and was able to proudly display for all the internet to see, as soon as I finished Integrity I decided I didn't like it and immediately started over.

I had never finished an image, been happy with it, and then walked away from it for years at a time before coming back to it, as was the case with Virtue.

Until this past December.

Here is the piece after completion in November of 2013:

Now here is the same photo reworked in December of 2015:

So why did I decide to go back to this piece nearly two years later?

The same reason I decided NOT to go back and edit old photos: Growth.

(**If you're curious about the meaning and symbolism behind this piece, you can read about it here, in my first blog post about Virtue. Disclaimer: it may or may not contain cringe worthy writing from my younger blogging self. Why oh why did I never go back and edit my posts before publishing?**) 

Virtue is part of an eight part series which I am currently working on. Yes, it's taken over two years, and I'm not even half way through. Let's not get into that. I legitimately made finishing this series one of my New Year's resolutions.

I digress.

Considering the amount of growth I'm happy to have experienced in the world of photography, I felt like there were stark differences in the mood, skill, and technique in my more recent photos in the series and I wanted my images to feel like they all belonged together (you can see the other two pieces here and here). In essence, I wanted this series to look like I wasn't such a tremendous slacker and hadn't taken the photos years apart.

So what have I learned from this? A few things:

1) Sometimes it's alright to live life on the edge and break your own rules.

2) However I still wouldn't make it a regular exercise to re-edit old photos. There were many times when I wanted to give up on this one and just let it take its subpar place in the series. To say the least, it was a very fierce battle between my perfectionism and my desire to work on other (newer and therefore more fun) pieces. Not incredibly enjoyable, I will confess.

3) Thank heavens someone invented the raw file format. 

AND

4) Perseverance is important if you want to finish a piece that's taken over two years to complete.

Here's a gif on how the magic happened (the second time around):

We also made a jaunt into the New York Public Library, but the main hall was closed for renovation, so we didn't get to see much other than this hallway (admittedly a beautiful hallway) and a few side rooms. Just another excuse to go back, I guess!

The Flat Iron Building at Sunset:

We also went to the Met, where Anna and I went to the Jacqueline de Ribes exhibit. I think this may have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. Look at these costumes! My mind was going crazy imaging all the cool photos I could have taken with these beautiful gowns!

The Met also had this really cool nativity tree, which played Christmas carols and light up various parts of the scene as it played. The angels on the tree actually reminded me of my tree topper growing up, which was cool.

After our marathon throughout Manhattan, we decided to call it a day and grabbed some bagels on the way home. I'm a little sad that my first "New York bagel" experience was not as magical as I thought it would be, mostly due to the lackluster cream cheese the shop had. I generally view my bagel as a vehicle for the massive amounts of cream cheese I slather on, so the fact that this delicious condiment didn't walk up was a little disappointing. 

Anyway, enough with my bagel tangent. Until next time!