Reflecting

I am finally returning to blogging again after an extended absence due to issues with my Hive keys and logging in. But I am really happy to be back, and I thought I'd jump back into things by reflecting back on my early photography journey.

It was 2011 and I had just moved to Denver with my partner at the time. I was newly pregnant with my daughter. Due to having only one shared vehicle at the time, I spent a great deal of time home alone while he worked. I put that time into learning both photography and meteorology so that I could better understand the weather patterns that fascinated me so.

And as storms and sunsets would stretch across the sky many afternoons, our 5th-story balcony offered the most incredible view of them all. It was here, on this balcony, that I captured lightning for the very first time in 2011.

I will never forget that moment when I saw the flash of the strike right as I pressed the shutter on my camera, and knew that I captured the bolt. I held my breath as I waited for the image to replay on my LCD screen: sure enough, not only did I capture it, but it was perfectly in focus! Tears filled my eyes as I was overcome with emotion.

Lightning was what I was most interested in photographing in my early storm chasing days, not just because I thought it was incredible, but because I know how incredibly hard it is to capture (without a lightning trigger, that is. In these early days, I didn't have access to the technology that helps to capture lightning more easily).

Exactly 10 years later, I captured the shot above with my Nikon D810 (used only in one prior post here). In mid-May of 2021, I was enjoying a very low-key chase in eastern Colorado. These are my favorite days much of the time, because I can really soak it all in: the sights, sounds, smells, and the beauty of the storm. And when I captured these incredible twin bolts in camera, I felt the exact same emotions of pure elation and fulfillment as I did when I captured my very first bolts in 2011.

When I look back at my photography journey, I just feel so grateful for every step in the process. It's been grueling, at times frustrating, but so incredibly rewarding simultaneously. Photography helps me immerse myself in the beauty of the world, a world that often feels dark and hopeless, and find light despite it all.

Photography is my hope, my healing, my greatest joy.

I wanted to preserve the image above with the very subtle tweaks I'd added when I first edited it in 2011, before I really knew how to edit photos. Now, I can see all the potential it has and it's tempting to want to re-work the image, but I also think it's important just to see how far I've really come. And that this, too, is an important visual reminder of my progress, while honoring the original vision I had in the beginning.

These images are all sentimental to me. I know I wouldn't be the photographer I am today if it weren't for the foundation I built in these early days of my journey. When I was pregnant and home alone, I studied the skies and my camera obsessively (along with parenting books). I get emotional thinking back to these times, and how lonely they were, and yet it was then that my photography and weather passions began to truly flourish and thrive.

The most emotional image of this set, though, is the image above. This is the first time I ever photographed mammatus clouds. It was the spring after my daughter's father had ended our relationship, and I was learning to navigate the single mother life for the first time.

While my daughter was playing happily in the living room one May afternoon, I was standing on the balcony several feet away, photographing the backside of a severe storm near Denver International Airport. As I was shooting, two Canadian geese flew side-by-side into the frame, and I captured them with my camera.

To me, this image represents my daughter and I rising up and out of the darkness of the prior season - the brutal holidays we'd spent as a split family for the first time - and the crushing depression I faced as I realized life as I knew it was over.

But what this moment and this image helped me realize is that a new and even more beautiful life than I ever could have imagined was just beginning.

I'd never have had the freedom and ability to chase storms (or my photography passion) today if her father and I were still together. Sometimes, things have to fall apart to make way for something so much greater.

I tear up every time I look at this image now as I think about the true power and gift that photography is. It has the power to heal, to preserve the beauty of a moment, yes. But it also has the power to show us who we really are and what we're capable of, if we only choose to keep reaching for the light.