This is my favorite photo from the shoot

Becca is kind and confident and funny. That is what I see in this photo.

It had been sunny all week, so when it was cloudy the day of the Anderson's shoot I was bummed out...until I pulled up and saw her fiery red hair against the grey clouds. Then I thought, "Hallelujah for clouds! This weather is perfect!" This photoshoot was everything I want every photoshoot to be: relaxed, real life, full of laughter and love and more laughter and more love. I'll take all the families who don't feel like they are "good in front of the camera" because they aren't working for a perfect picture. Tom, Becca, and Dean walked, played, laughed, chatted, sat, snacked, and relaxed, and I was having so much fun observing them I [accidentally] took more than 600 photos of them.

I have been studying a lot about creativity. It's not a talent that comes easily to me, but it's a talent I want, so I am reading, listening, and practicing everything creativity related. In one podcast I listened to the interviewer asked Sting to define creativity. Sting said it was the ability to take risks. The interviewer also talked about one study that was done on musicians who perform for hours, and everything they play is improv. Those conducting the study wanted to know what happens in our brains the moment creativity happens. While they don't know much about when or how that moment occurs, what they did find - in this one study - was that while creativity is taking place, our prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain associated with consequences) turns off, in a sense. In other words, if we want to be creative, we have to be able to take a risk, and not worry about what happens if, or when, we fail.

I have set a goal to practice creativity everyday. I want to take pictures that make me giddy-happy. The relaxed attitude throughout this shoot made it easy for me to take on that challenge, and I love the photos that came of it.