05/16/11

Happy Anniversary to my Mom and Dad who have been married 47 years today!! What a blessing they are to me and my family. They have been awesome examples of what true love is.... one that is committed in good times and bad.

Since I am thinking of weddings today, I thought I would share with you the dream I had last week regarding the weddings I will be photographing in the future.

I seem to always have those dreaded nightmare dreams right before school starts where I lose total control of my class, can't walk or run, even end up in the middle of the floor with no energy to do anything. They are such lovely dreams I have to help me feel SO ready to start a new year.

I have never had one of those type of lose control dreams with my photography until NOW.

Get ready and, if you know me personally, realize I would be acting all of this out if you were being told this in person.

I am supposed to be at the wedding at 9:00 but I decide I am too tired and slept in. I figured the bride would call me if she was worried.

I never got a call so I look at the clock and it is 1:30 and I realize the wedding is starting in 30 minutes. I haven't showered or gotten anything ready. I decide to just throw my hair up in a ponytail and hope I don't stink.

I arrive at the wedding at 1:45 only to realize I have no memory cards for the occasion. All of a sudden, as I am in a panic realizing I need those cards, my Golden Chariot (the van) pops in front of me with some man driving it and he tells me he will take me home to get them. He has 4 or 5 people in the van with him. SO.... not knowing this guy that is driving MY van, I hop in and he takes me home to get my memory cards.

I am now back at the wedding, only it is at Campbell University and not the church. I head up the stairs to try and find the bride so I can start photographing her. I am SO tired and can barely make it up the steps. Then I begin to crawl on the floor with my camera on my back. It seemed to take forever but I finally got to the room where the bride was - only to find she was on the toilet. Yes, you read that right.... She is flipping up her dress constantly to be able to use the bathroom. What is most interesting is the bride is not the bride I will actually be photographing, it is her director of her wedding! I begin fumbling with my camera telling myself I need to start taking pictures of the details.... of the woman on the TOILET!!!!!!

As I am photographing her, none of the pictures are turning out as I had hoped. They are either blurry or someone is in them that shouldn't be or she just isn't cooperating on that toilet. I decided I needed to go find the groom and do some shots of him and his groomsmen.

I told the groomsmen to meet me by some windows that I thought would be nice since it was raining outside. What do I do? I take them outside anyway. I see this set of concrete stairs that I thought would be FABULOUS to get a creative picture. As I am looking around trying to find the groom, I notice all of the groomsmen are dressed in navy sport coats, white shirts and red and blue striped ties. One guy even has on a sweater vest with it. We're quite patriotic in THIS wedding. I kept thinking I just KNEW that guy with the sweater vest was hot.

I look around and found the groom... only it wasn't the groom I will be photographing shortly, it was a guy named Vinc who married a girl that graduated from college with me. I was shocked but though "OK." I position them on the steps and am trying to photograph them but my camera starts doing crazy things. The pictures are either too dark, too blown out, or too blurry. My ISO on the camera begins to go haywire and will not stop at the ISO I want. My bracket that holds my flash is flopping all over and not spreading light where it is needed. I then look at the pictures I am taking and see a picture of MY family on there that I had taken years ago. I was stressing big time.

Next, I keep wanting just the groom and his guys. Well, in walks the pastor and decides he needed to be in the picture. Then, the groomsmen wives and children entered in the shot. I kept telling them all to get out of the shot because I ONLY wanted the men. VOILA... the staircase is now inside a building. I am freaking out because I can't get the shot I want and I keep wondering when this wedding is going to start. NO ONE seems to be too concerned that it was now 3:00 and people had been waiting for a long time.

I then poof out of there and head down to the reception. It was in an office building cafeteria type setting. As I walked down, everyone setting up for the reception was running around saying they didn't have electricity down there. How I could see everything lit up was beyond me. I noticed that the items they chose to eat for the reception were JELLO and CANTALOUPE. Nice combo, don't you think?

I began to look around and begin saying to myself.... "I've got to capture the details!" so I begin photographing this big tower like thing of jello. There was a guy setting up nearby and he asked why I was photographing that. I told him it was all about the details of the day. Next thing I know, the real child of the director of the wedding who was the bride on the toilet was messing up the jello.

Then I woke up.... extremely tired.

If you read this far I am so proud of you.

And, no, I am not taking any strong medication.