8 AM

Rushed, I threw a sweatshirt over my head, wound a scarf crazily around my neck, pulled the ill fitting knit cap over my unbrushed hair and threw my camera and lenses into the car. I started the ignition and waited for the engine to warm up. Agitated, eager to get on my way, I pulled out of the driveway before the rear windshield was thoroughly defrosted.

It wasn't until I parked the car near a small stream that I slowed down. Out of the car, the air was still. The early freeze was melting on the fall leaves that covered the ground as I silently walked down the road, looking for loveliness.

8 am holds a lot of lovely.

Falling

Isn't it incredible, how the leaves are so magnificent in the last days of their life?

How they fill the countryside with their bright hues, almost as a rebuke towards the coming descent to the forest floor, where they will become a brown carpet of decay?

I am forced to wonder if I am unknowingly past the brightest time in my own life. Is it only as I tumble from the tree and slowly flutter to the ground that I realize the best is behind me? Or can I be keenly aware of this in the moment?

Dancing

"The music moves me. It just moves me ugly." Willam H. Macy in Wild Hogs

I used to love dancing. I wasn't great; I wasn't ever going to battle someone in a NY club, but if I closed my eyes and assumed the White Man's Overbite, I thought I could hold my own in any college town bar. My sisters and I held dance parties in our living room, assaulting our parents with the classiest songs from my Booty Shakin' Hits CD. Way back, when I was MUCH younger (read the mid-teen years), my younger sister and I crafted elaborate dance routines in the rain with umbrellas. We were smart enough to restrict these presentations to the back yard, but we secretly hoped for national acclaim for our newly discovered dance style.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped dancing. In fact, I stopped doing many things that were done simply for the joy of the doing. If there wasn't a clearly defined purpose, I wasn't inclined to participate.

Then I look at my beautiful children. Easily, 85% of their activity is done just to make themselves happy. To express the joy that bubbles out of their very being. They are effervescent, free, uninhibited.

The music still moves them. Ungracefully, awkwardly, but oh so magically! The beauty lies simply in the willingness to be moved.

The Journey

I lost my way.

Since I was 16, I loved photography. I never fancied myself an artist; in fact, the only class I cried in during college was my Intro to Drawing. During the charcoal lessons. I despised being there and knew deep within me I was never, ever intended to be an artist.

But photography? Well, that was entirely different. That didn't require me to be an artist, complete with my preconceived notions of beret wearing, cigarette smoking, philosophically speaking strange people. I could simply capture what I encountered.

I did just that. I captured what I encountered from about 1993 until 2005 and trapped it all within 55 albums, now neatly arranged in my bedroom. I photographed flowers, buildings, landscapes, abstract shapes, the amazing views I found in Italy, Spain and Greece. I did very little portrait work. It wasn't my passion.

It is so easy to see now, as I look back through those albums. Portraiture was never my passion.

But somehow, I spent the last three years honing my portraiture skills. I know why. I felt it was where the money was. Yes, I would tell people, I love other types of photography, but the money is in portraits. Family and children primarily. I sold my passion. And, as I look back, the sale was pretty cheap.

Portrait work became a double edged sword for me. I loved, absolutely thrilled myself, when I managed to get THE shot from a family session. But I never knew if I was going to deliver that shot. I always felt terribly inadequate before and after a session. I secretly hoped I would get a call saying someone in the family was sick and we would have to postpone. The stress overcame the pleasure, the doubts outweighed everything and I stepped back from what I was doing.

I decided to return to shooting for myself. Photographing what I saw, the way I saw it. I flipped my camera from RAW to jpeg. I lightened my hand in photoshop. I didn't mind if my work was all over the place, showing trees and buildings and people. I needed to rekindle the desire to shoot freely, expressively and experimentally.

I don't know where this path will lead or if there will ever be a Julie Rivera Photography again. But I feel it is the right path to be on.

My way has been found. I am not at all lost.

Driving

I drove today. Drops of rain fell half heartedly from the heavy skies, but I knew this would be the best light in which to catch the fall colors, burning with such intensity.

I drank in the majesty of this season. The tree trunks were almost black with moisture, while the leaves shimmered with water.

I turned when I felt like it and ambled through the back roads. I saw everything. Really saw it. Felt it. Smiled at the twisting road, silently thanking it for curving so beautifully, rising and falling, leading me through this bounty of nature.

I can't tell you how many roads I photographed. Each one seemed better than the one before. Maybe not better. Just unique. And splendid. And deserving of a photograph. Honestly, though, I struggled with how to best capture what I saw. It was almost too wonderful. Too broad. No way to pare it down to fit my image.

Where my camera may have failed, I strained to engrave the scenes in my mind's eye. The sweeping vista of rolling hills trailing off towards the horizon, a farm or two dotting the foreground, gentle wisps of late fog weaving its way upwards out of the tree line. I couldn't photograph it right. But I can remember it perfectly.

I was no more than 10 miles from home. Driving. Photographing. Feeling.

Payment

The price of a child's affection:

One fruit snack...

equals one kiss.

Transaction complete.

(Technical specs: 85mm/1.8, ISO 640, 1/800, f/3.5)

Unfettered

I have laid in bed drafting this blogpost in my head for the past week. I get a sentence. A phrase. A thought. I want to be meaningful and deep. But concise, for I figure not many have the patience for my meaningful and deep thoughts. And then I fall asleep, blogpost unscripted, the days rolling over me, depth and meaning cast aside for survival and motherhood.

This blog began as a part of my business of photography. It has never existed outside that purpose of advertising my work and sharing controlled bits of who I am so I can entice potential clients to hire me over the thousands of other photographers out there.

Today, it exists simply to exist. The business is gone. The photographer remains. I might have readers. I might not. I could be screaming into the darkest night, but I would still have the need to scream. The need to gather my thoughts through word and picture.

I am free to explore photography for the simple sake of loving a pretty picture. A well captured moment. A perspective that might not be common to all. I don't have to be careful about which images are "blog worthy" for fear it might not represent my "style" to all those potential clients I no longer seek. I can throw any picture I want on here.

I am unfettered in my pursuit of photography. And it is wide and free and almost scary with its possibilities.

I am now simply Julie. I think I will figure out what that means exactly with the help of my camera and these words I type into my blog.