Living My Passion - My WHY for a change in the way I do business...

I wanted to write a post about the changes I have made within my business, Why I have changed my packages and pricing, and also what this now means for all of you. I thought I could write it all in one post – HA! Ambitious expectations are just so natural to me!

Instead I have decided to break it down a bit… and today write about what fueled the changes in the first place. I will follow up over the coming weeks with more about how those changes will look for Suzanne Willson Photography and what it will all mean for you.

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Over the past few years I have explored a number of different options for my photography and the way to ‘run’ my business. There are so many specialty areas within the photography profession I tend to liken it to the medical profession with all it’s different specialist branches. There is also the ‘GP’ who is a bit of an all-rounder, and while important and versatile, not fully educated in any one particular sub-field of medicine.

While I see the benefits of being a ‘GP’ of photography, the downfall of such an approach is that it leaves the photographer scattered – good at many different types of photography, but not great at any… and certainly not passionate about all of them, if at all finding the time to be passionate about any!

And so, I have been on a quest to find the style of photography that I am PASSIONATE about…

First I felt that I needed to define passion. What IS it exactly? What are we talking about when we talk about being passionate?

The Oxford Dictionary defines passion as being “an intense desire or enthusiasm for something”. Wikipedia says that passion is a term “often applied to a lively or eager interest in or admiration for a proposal, cause, or activity…”, and the Urban Dictionary states that “It is more than just enthusiasm or excitement, passion is ambition that is materialized into action to put as much heart, mind body and soul into something as is possible”.

Which led me to ask the question – Where in my life have I felt that before? Where have I felt passionate about a cause or activity? When have I put as much of myself into something as possible?

The obvious answer of course is my children! My family! But I needed to look deeper than that…

I was an Early Childhood Teacher for 15 years before the birth of my youngest child and for many of the earlier years of my career it was a ‘job’. The children and the families were wonderful to work with, but for me it lacked that spark that really makes you feel alive. Until I discovered the work and philosophy of Reggio Emilia, a town in Italy where children’s learning is valued and encouraged in a way I had never seen before. It embraces the natural world, the simplicity of nature and the connections and relationships between a community that made my heart just explode in a way I cannot even begin to explain.

THIS was what I was passionate about!!!!

I found that sharing this knowledge with colleagues, teaching and learning about it together, and implementing the philosophies and practices within the context of our own community (the community of the Early Childhood Settings where I worked) made me feel ALIVE. I was no longer just ‘observing’ what children ‘needed to learn’… I was telling stories about what they WERE learning. I was telling stories about their thinking processes, their relationships, their growth, their beauty, their competence and their inner unique being. I was doing something so valuable that I couldn’t be stopped. I got into a ‘zone’ and I literally LIVED my passion… it became a part of me. It was on my mind constantly. I walked, talked, ate and breathed it…. And I wanted EVERYONE to know about it so they could feel the same joy that I did.

Looking back at this experience – and feeling those emotions swell within me once again to the point I was in happy tears – made me realize that I already know what my passion is, and THIS is what I need to be sharing with people through my photography!

I want to share connections between people, tell visual stories of relationships and the interactions they have with each other… How they feed off each other’s energy, how they support and encourage each other, how they love each other. Everyone does these things differently. They look different in each family, each group of friends, and each environment. I want to capture this uniqueness in a way that is natural to each person and each family.

I want to capture the simplicity of life. The ordinary moments that make up a family’s routine. I want to capture these things for them because these ordinary moments change with time. They change with the growing up of children, the addition or loss of family members, even the seasons change routines… and within these ordinary moments there are so many things worth documenting through photographs.

There are many things I want to remember. The way my son sleeps with his special monkey curled under his arm, the way my older daughter takes care of her sister by brushing her hair for her, the look in my younger daughter’s eyes as we sit together and read a book – the look of connection and importance and pure innocent love.

Now many people might say, ‘I can just grab my iPhone and snap a quick shot of that and I don’t need to pay heaps of money to have photos!’ and I totally agree that these images have their place.  But I believe EVERY family should have the opportunity to document the love and connection and joy within their relationships and routines in a way that tells the story of their life, that captures the beauty and that looks beyond the surface and finds the EXTRAORDINARY within the ordinary. And sometimes it takes fresh eyes to be able to see what has been right there in front of us the whole time.

Because ordinary life and ordinary people truly are EXTRAORDINARY!!!