Pensacola Wedding Photographer | Destin Wedding Photographer | Pensacola Boudoir ~ Avant Images Wedding Photographer|Storyteller

There are holidays I look forward to far more than Valentine’s day.   I wouldn’t go as far as to say I hate Valentine’s day, like some sort of romance scrooge… no, I just prefer it offered up genuinely and spontaneously.  I’m not one for grand gestures and am particular about the sort of chocolates I like, I’d rather pick flowers out of my own yard, I’m terrible at picking out greeting cards, and I can’t figure why on earth anyone would spend three times as much as any other day at their favorite restaurant simply because it’s the fourteenth day of February.  So all that being said, I can’t for the life of me figure why I was inspired this morning to devote a whole post on this blog to a holiday that just doesn’t mean much at all to me.  But I was, so here it is.

Love is a pretty spectacular thing.  An unpredictable, ever evolving, crazy ride of a spectacular thing and I consider myself one of the fortunate few to have someone…that one perfect someone for me…to take this crazy ride with.  People are fallible and will undeniably disappoint at one time or another, but when you find that one person who will hold your hand and love you through the failure and disappointments because there are more good times to be had, then you hold that hand as tightly as you can.  Thank you for holding my hand.

A few months ago there was a bit of a shake up in the wedding industry blogosphere.  Some were deeply offended, some enthusisastically applauded, and I dare say some just skipped on by.  I casually participate in a wedding photographer forum in which the author of the blog is also a member, so I read what was written, pondered it with some interest, and then forgot about it.  With the exception of three sentences…”Strip it back.  Peel the layers off.  And start again.”  Those three sentences struck a chord with me, not quite in the way the author intended them I expect, but struck that chord nonetheless.

It is difficult to say what I love most about my work, but were I forced to make a definitive choice I would have to say the thing I love most are the stories of people’s lives.  Stories of courtships, marriages, births, anniversaries, travels, hilarities, and hard times.  I’m not much of a writer, but the ability and invitation to put those stories in tangible form is what gets me.  Some of you may know my story, some may only know bits and pieces, and some of you are deeply a part of it.  This year, this chapter of the story of my life circled back time and time again to one theme…stripping it back, peeling off the layers, and starting again.  If I have learned anything in 2011 it is this:  Leave the minutiae behind, close your eyes for a moment and see with senses uncluttered by the noise that so often blankets our eyes and minds.  Do that and you will see with perfect clarity what is at the heart of your life.  When you reach that point you will again see with clarity what is at the heart of your work.  And when you get there you will discover the balance.  Balance is key.

I could regale you with thoughts of what it is to stand at the edge of a cliff gazing at the vastness where the heavens meet the earth, or what it is to watch the sun rise over the Rocky mountains, or even what it is to travel 500 miles on the back of a motorcycle with nothing at all between you and the wind because I did all those things this year.  If you follow along my life on the crazy internet you have already heard my thoughts on those things though, so instead I will tell you what it is to see 60 years of life, history, love, and family in the faces of my grandparents.  If there is such a thing as perfection in this world it is the smiles on their faces on their 60th wedding anniversary and the safe harbor of a home they have built for us.  They are remarkable people and if I place but one goal for myself in life it is to be able to look back in the winter of my life and see the same sort of legacy they have built.

To all of you who have invited me into and touched me with your stories, here are a few tangible glimpses of the legacies you are building.  As I type this with a lump in my throat, overwhelmed with emotion, I have one more quote.  This one from a gentleman sitting next to me at a bar in New Orleans.  He said, “if anything is worth doing it is worth overdoing.”  While I am sure his meaning was quite different than the one I will leave you with, I still found it rather poignant.  Laugh too loudly, smile too often, travel too far, love too deeply…live life out loud.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year…here is to the next chapter in the story.

~Tiffany