permission to create

Lately, I have been in a bit of a rut. A creative rut. I’ve been wanting to update the ol’ blog and shoot photos just for fun and Life has had some other ideas. I know every creative soul goes thru this from time to time, but man – I feel like it has become a state of being for me! I talked recently with an artist friend of mine who suggested that I needed to give myself “Permission to Create”. Say what?

Permission to Create. Now there’s an interesting idea. Her words struck me as I began to realize that somewhere along the way, I stopped doing just that. When I started this business a little over a year ago, I wasn’t afraid to try new things, to experiment, to succeed – or even to fail. At some point, I started measuring my success by how well I pleased everyone else, and in so doing I lost myself. I stopped experimenting – stopped playing – stopped having fun!

I had been thinking a lot about this idea of giving myself Permission to Create when we took a weekend trip to Kentucky to visit our dear friends who recently moved there. Jenni has always been a huge support and encouragement to me and part of the reason for our trip was a family photo shoot. I remember asking what kind of “feel” she was looking for in her photographs – If she had any specific editing style she wanted me to use. She responded with these words: “You just do your creative Mary Alice thing, and I am sure that I will love it!” And with that sentence, Jenni had done for me what I hadn’t figured out how to do for myself. So, thanks for the permission, Jenni – I love you!

That said, here are a few images of Jenni and her Phillip. I love the soft, vintage-y feel – very different from my usual style! I have lots more of the whole family to share, but I’m not quite done with those yet.

This next  image makes me really, really happy. And not only because my sweet friends were willing to risk ticks and chiggers for me but because normally, I would have only posted this image in color (because it’s oh, so bright and lovely in color). Also, I had intended for it to be flipped the other way, but I was watching Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” while I was editing and well…looking at this image sort of made me feel like they’re falling down the rabbit hole. Which is kind of like being in love, right?

Thank you, Jenni and Phillip for being such willing subjects. I love you both, and I’ll have the ones with the kids up soon!