Rock & Roll Over

model : Ashley Krantz / Elite Models

Undertow

 

This was a day my friend Mattiel and I spent beneath the surface + sunshine with a 35mm camera and our imaginations. Being under the water is so mystical + dreamlike. I wish I could stay down there for hours, exploring caves and finding shells. The perception of this world resembles my sight of being little and having the privilege to swim in some of the prettiest oceans of all for as long as I wanted, swimming by beautiful creatures and their underwater nativity. I still dream to swim with a big, friendly whale someday.

have you been anywhere magical lately?

Tomorrow's anywhere

instant photograph from a random cotton field in south Georgia 

While watching the sun fall down as it is brimmed through the clouds, I realized this summer is almost over. Autumn will soon be returning, the leaves will turn gold and then soon after cold will return. Is it just me or does time turn faster as we grow older?  I've learned a lot from the birds these days. They sing in both the earliest morning and at the setting of the sun, and they are more without a care in the world than anything else I know of. We as humans can sing our cares away much easier than we can reason them away, I do at least. A bird with a dappled wing taught me a bright lesson as it kept singing. Listening to it's music with the dark storm clouds forming, I was reminded to never stop singing during trials. Why yield to gloomy anticipations?

Recently a  friend of mine asked me, "where do you see yourself in a few years?" I didn't even get to finish my answer because it was such a big question that I distracted myself with talking about one small hope and got completely sidetracked, later to remember I probably didn't even make sense. Ever since that question has run through my mind at night, in all thankfulness of it's upbringing that day. I still don't have the full answer but I always tell myself I want to keep traveling, photograph new strangers, be married young, change people's lives through my photographs, ect ect ect. 

by "ect" I mean these things are little details I tell myself yearly, daily and out loud to people but when it comes down to it I have big, huge visions to where I want to see myself and how I want to make it reality. There's days the future seems a thousand years away and other days I want to lock myself in my bathroom and cry in the bathtub. But in all truth what I want is to live for the plan God has for me, and create as much greatness though Him as possible. I do not view myself as great in any manner, I yearn for humility, but when I am inspired I know it is by my faith and that's what helps me create, and in creating comes inspiring, and through that I touch lives (which is a living dream). Greatness comes not by having a mossy path made for you through the meadow, but being sent through a difficult, rocky place to finally reach the mountain splendors. The riches of this life that a soul searches for can be obtained in the wilderness. In order to grow up we must sometimes be very much alone, and dwell on what we truly want for ourselves rather than living in a circle and constant replay of an everyday routine. 

While deeply trying to find my road to take during the past few months I kept coming across this verse (Hosea 2:14-15) - Therefore, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. I will give her vineyards from there,

and then the valley as a door of hope. After comparing this to my life opportunity started blooming among all the alone time I spent, along with traveling adventures when I got to discover beautiful mountains, rivers, cities, people, and inner comfort as well. These memories now greet me to reveal and remind it isn't the thing you do, it's the things you leave undone in life that hold back that place you want to be someday. If you have a passion, it will show. If you don't work towards your passion constantly then you're not obsessed enough to make it happen. I have a lot of passion for a handful of things. Dreams/love/my future being almost all of them. Aside from my cameras, boring journal posts, and occasional self portraits I have a lot of love for my unseen future. I hold such a place in my heart for the honeyed man I will marry, the love of my life and how beautiful that piney forest wedding will be at dusk. Or the way he will surprise me with a kiss as I rummage through piles of film on the shadowy floor of our home so often. I hold so much love for the child I will someday hold and teach to dream as big as they want, just like my mother and father taught me. And, to visit new places with both of these people with cameras on my arms and joy in my heart, thanking the good and bad for bringing them to me in the perfect plan made through it all in my life. Everything happens for a reason, and I have many plans, passions and desires, too many to share right at this time. So now it's time for bed. What are your future hopes?

x 

Bliss