Hooters Mud Volleyball

A couple summers ago, my sister in law asked me to take pictures during the Mud Volley Tournament they have each year in our area.  The match I photographed was against the ladies at the Tilted Kilt.  It was an awesome game to watch.  While these girls essentially make money off of their looks, they had no problems getting dirty and trying their hardest to represent their store.  

I have hundreds of pictures from this match, which was not an easy feat, as I had to be shin deep in mud to not have people blocking my view.  Here are some of my favorites:

Sometimes, it's disappointing when you don't get the clearest photo, but you just have to take away the story it tells and learn from your mistakes, and know that you can't control everything.

A Dog's Life

This is my youngest dog, Sam, when she was a wee puppy.  The day we brought her home, she weighed an impressive 4 lbs, and she hadn't even been dewormed yet.  Over 2 years later, she is a happy, one-eyed, 140 lb English Mastiff who hogs the couch and passes gas louder than most grown men.

At our house, pets are family.  They sleep on the couch, sometimes in our beds, follow us everywhere, and 'talk' loudly when they want something.  We got Sam from a breeder in Michigan.  Because of her one-eyed status, she was available at a serious discount.  I know many people have a problem with breeders because there are so many shelter and rescue dogs out there, but our plight was similar to many others who have tried to go the rescue route.  We wanted a pure bred because the temperament and characteristics fit our family, and with the potential to be such a large dog, we wanted to know she wasn't an unpredictable mix of breeds.

 Many rescues (I would say most, but I did not research every single one) have some serious, unbendable rules.  I understand that rules are necessary, however, the fact that we had never had an English Mastiff in our family was nearly always an immediate disqualification.  Our two children also disqualified us from most lists.  In the end, we found our girl, paying only a slight amount, which I doubt covered their expenses for her. 

She joined our now 7 year old Cocker mix, George.

It's unbelievable how much George has changed since bringing Sam into her life, but they became buddies over time, and now George will even try to protect her sister when their 'cousin', Smudge, plays too rough.  

Having all three of them at my house sounds like it should be a chaotic mess, but it's actually a blast.  We take our pets pretty seriously in this family, and they love us unconditionally.  My sister-in-law even brought home a sister for Smudgie this summer.  Next year it will be quite the adventure watching all four of them run around and play in the sprinklers.

A Bride

Here is the gorgeous bride from the wedding my husband and I attended a couple months ago.  When we married, she was 9, and that was the first time I met her (and most of my husband's family.)  At the time, we were living about 3 hours away from them and it was a guessing game each Thanksgiving trying to figure out which cousin was which.  In my defense, he has a lot of cousins.  They hit their growth spurts sporadically like most and trying to keep them straight by height or how old they looked just didn't work.

She is the youngest, and it has been amazing to see the woman she has become.  I remember moments from her teen years, like wanting to be old enough to try out for American Idol and that I can't even recall seeing her at her graduation open house (those are really for your parents anyway.)

Today, she's a woman who is open and fun, enjoys the bingo hall, and can connect with my son in a way that should probably make me feel incompetent, but rather makes me so happy to see him engage with someone who really gets him.

It's not always easy to find someone who is as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside, but she definitely makes the list.  

Children

This is a lovely little girl whose picture sits right above my computer monitor.  When she was a baby, I could hear her crying at my neighbor's house with such volume and intensity, but there was nothing wrong.  I suppose one of those things that we attribute to a baby being colicky.  My own daughter screamed like that quite regularly, especially when I was dying to get some sleep.  Of course both grew out of it, and since, I never saw this little one unhappy.

At times she'd come walking to the fence that separated our yards, twisting at the waist, just waiting for my Mastiff puppy to come to the fence so she could scream in excitement and run away.  Everything was something to laugh or scream wildly at.  Grandma's house was a place of such excitement that she had to be completely exhausted before she would sleep, all so she could start again the next day.

Her brother, on the other hand, was quite shy.  He would often hide his face from me, but if he saw my dogs first, he'd start calling to them, completely ignoring that I was outside and could see him having fun.

Photographing children, in my experience, is so much more rewarding than the challenge of adults.  They are much less inhibited and even when they pose for a photograph, their entire personality is on display.  An adult, or even older child, stands or sits, trying to look their best and be perfectly still because that is the goal that has been drilled over and over and over.  While I appreciate a good, staged photograph for preservation, I always want to capture who they are, not just what they look like.

The Looks I Get

This man is my husband.  This is one of the looks I get when I'm doing something that he really wishes I wouldn't, but knows I'm going to do it anyway.   90% of the time, I will do it anyway.  Okay, maybe it's more like 99%.

Many times he's forced to be the subject of photographs when he really doesn't want to be, but he plays along, knowing that it's what I want and in the end, most of the photos will stay on my computer and away from the internet. I think sometimes he's bothered more by the pictures he didn't know I was taking

because he's alone in those.  In the first photo you can only see him, but he was a having a conversation, albeit a non-verbal one, with me.  In this one, he was on his own, exposed and unaware.  As much as I like doing things with my husband, sometimes I still want to be an observer.

If all of life was a party...

This is one of my favorite moments that hangs on my wall.  The woman pictured is exactly what this photo shows her to be, outgoing, beautiful, intelligent, slightly outside of the norm, and incredibly fun.  These are the moments in life to relish, and I wish I had more photographs to relive them all.  As memories fade, this wedding will become short clips and a summary in my head, but these photographs will help me hold on to more moments than my cluttered brain would have done on its own.

Aw crap, what am I doing?

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I am doing.  Sadly, I can report nothing.  I have no idea what to do with myself.  While trying to put a portfolio online, I just became so disappointed in the process.  Filing through over 15,000 photos is exhausting, especially with a computer who seems to have more of a personality than I do.

I could say for the moment, I've given up on the idea of creating a website for the sole purpose of doling out a url for those who ask to see my portfolio.  I'm of the variety who loves to touch a photograph, and seeing them online just doesn't make me feel quite the same.

There's also the concern of what to choose.  I know what I like, I know what I want, but do I dare let others take a look with the possibility that they will see nothing?  Yes, but boy does the idea suck.

Which all culminates to this point.  Screw the organization of a portfolio for now.  I love photographs.  All I want to do is share them and have them shared with me (which my friends can testify to my constant nagging for photos) because they all tell a story.  Even if the story is, "I screwed this one up."

The picture above isn't even mine, while editing a relative's recent wedding photos, I found this gem that my husband took of his cousin.  I thought it was a fabulous way to express how I feel about starting this blog and making myself stick to it.  No one can see all the photos I surround my desk and fill my hard drive with, so here I am, putting them out there in the hopes that someone will want to share these visual stories with me and show their own.

 The only value anything has, is what we give it.