Huahine Hibiscus

2010 was both the best and worst year of my life… not only did I celebrate the happiest day of my life on my wedding day; I celebrated the saddest day after the passing of my Mother. I am not usually one for New Years resolutions, but did feel a sense of relief to be starting over and looking ahead to what I hope will be a year of exciting possibilities. Starting a career as a photographer is high on my list of things I want to focus my energy towards. This is a journey I have already started on and it’s been an interesting experience. I have yet to discover my area of photographic expertise – weddings? families? real estate?! So many options and so much to consider! What will generate enough money so I can contribute to supporting my family? What will make me standout from the rest of the photographic world? How can my photography benefit my community? And most importantly, to me, what is it that I love so much that all I want to do is photograph it?

One of my most favourite online and print publications is www.islands.com and anyone who knows me really well would be able to tell you why. With articles like “Why we love the beach”, “Acoustic Venice”, and “The top 10 Islands to live on” you’ll soon find yourself whisked away to places where the stuff dreams are made within the writing and breathtaking photography that graces the pages. Landing a story with such a publication would be incredible, in fact, it’s something that I’ve thought about so much and desired for so long that it actually causes me to function out of fear, making me resist temptation to go after it… bizarre!

One afternoon, just before the holiday break, I took 20 mins to have a cup of tea and visit some of my most favourite websites that I tend to check in on every once and awhile, islands.com being one of them. I scrolled through their blog and came across a post titled “Putting Yourself Out There“. Short and sweet, the posting immediately spoke to me, woke me up, and put rest to some of my frustrations… the only person, who is stopping me from making the unimaginable imaginable, is me… I haven’t put myself out there. I decided right then and there that I was not going to let myself do this anymore, even as difficult, exciting and sometimes nauseating as it is to put you and your creativity on display, you just have to if you want to succeed. And so, I wrote to the author of the blog post, I told her everything about me and my experiences over the past year and how this piece really spoke to me… and then… just the other day, after thinking I was lost in the cyber world, she wrote back… and thanked me for my note! For me it was contact and one step closer to a now, not so unimaginable dream.