Hi! We want to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves, and to tell you a bit about our love of photography...
I'm Tricia. I have been interested in photography since I was a kid with a pink Mickey Mouse camera that used 110 film. That film was like GOLD to me. Actually, I'm not a big fan of gold, but saying "that film was like SILVER to me" doesn't have the same effect, does it? Anyhow, the number of images that one can take on a roll of 110 film is miserably limited. I prized it. I planned every shot as perfectly and precisely as I possibly could. I spent hours looking through the lens while avoiding the shutter button like the plague. And when I finally did snap a photo, and finish a roll, the anticipation that encompassed me while I waited the DAYS that it took for my film to be sent away and developed and returned to me with my prints is something that every photographer should experience at least once in their life. No DSLR, no camera screen, nothing digital at all. Each and every photo is, essentially, a mystery. I was an "artsy" little photographer, too. I didn't limit my photos to dressing my little sisters up and posing them around the house, though I enjoyed that more than SO many things. I also held my camera up and stared through the lens at tree branches, waiting to try and capture the perfect rays of sunlight passing through them. I even took a photo once that, later on, I swore was an accident. An accident? With my prized film in my precious camera? NEVER. I intentionally took a photo of my feet propped up in front of me on the railing of our porch because I simply liked the way it looked through my lens. When my little sisters proceeded to tease and question me "You took a picture of your feet?!" followed by giggles and snickers, I lied. "Nope. Don't even know how that happened." And here I am today, comfortable in my quirky, artsy skin, and lucky enough to have an amazing sister (Jen) and a fabulous cousin-in-law (Shelby) who share my passion for photography and were just as excited as I was to begin this adventure together. Now, meet Jen: I don't like writing about myself, but here goes. I've loved photography since I was a kid buying disposable cameras with money I saved up and blowing through the allotted pictures so quickly I was always convinced there were some I didn't use, so I would wind it every so often to make sure no film somehow appeared. Waiting for the film to develop was the worst thing imaginable; some of you might not realize this with your fancy technology, but, as Tricia said above, it took DAYS to see how your pictures would turn out. When it was time to pick them up, I would try to act casual but never made it out of the store before I would tear open the paper envelope and shuffle through the pictures so quickly I could barely take in what I was seeing. Then, looking at them closer on the drive home, over and over, feeling accomplished that I preserved these blurry, dark, unfocused memories to have forever. I remember always hearing people say "a picture is worth a thousand words," but when I would look at the pictures I took, or my friends took, it wasn't the words that mattered to me, it was the feelings the pictures, the memories, prompted me to feel. Moving from past tense to now, I still look at photographs the same. I love how a moment frozen in time can do more than appeal to the eye but also cause you to feel something. Looking at a picture of a puppy playing in the leaves can cause joy, while a picture of an old man standing with his hand on a war monument and his head bowed can cause sorrow and pain to spring up in your heart. A photograph is more than a moment frozen in time. It's a memory. A feeling. A life. Jen And now, the final member of the Reverie Photography team, Shelby: Unlike the two beautiful ladies before me, I didn't know until a little later that it was photography that I loved. In fact, for the longest time, I can honestly say that I thought I was just weird. I would be walking with friends or family and I would just stop; something would catch my eye. I would see the light hit somebody just right and you could see every fleck of color dance in their eyes, or a sun flare peek out at me from behind a tree like it was waving hello. Those moments were pure magic for me, but when I would mention what I saw to anyone else, I would just get this look, always the same one, that said “I don't see anything special; it's just a tree” or “It's just a person sitting on a bench” and I knew that they couldn't see the magic I was seeing; they couldn't see the beauty in something that they thought so ordinarily plain. I was sixteen when I realized what I was seeing were photographs in my mind. I was handed a DSLR camera by my then boyfriend's brother and was asked to take a photo of him. After asking him if he was sure, because it looked so expensive, (What if I dropped it?!) he reassured me I would be fine and instructed me to just point and shoot. I don't know now what I had said, probably a lame joke in my awkward teenage way, but I got him to laugh. I remember thinking to myself “NOW!” as I found and pressed the shutter button. It was when I looked down at the playback screen that I knew THIS is what I had been missing, that I had my explanation, and that the magic was real! Elliott Erwitt said it the best: “Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things that you see and everything to do with the way that you see them.” It's now going on 9 years later, and I now have two wonderful compeers, and I get to wake up every morning knowing that I get to do what I love, with the people that I love. With all my love or whatever, -Shelby
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AuthorThe Reverie Photography Team Archives
May 2017
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