Why take portraits?

From the very beginning of portraiture — one could argue from the very beginning of art itself — we have created portraits because things were important to us.

Since cave man days, these things that were important to us have been celebrated in one way: by putting them on our walls.

The most important things, whether it was victory in the hunt depicted in a cave painting, or an illustrious ancestor on the wall of a British manor house: that is what has occupied our wall space, both physical and mental. We have looked at these wall decorations, and been inspired, uplifted, motivated, warmed.

Until recently.

The rise of commerce has given way to something known as “commercial art.” It’s mass-produced, VERY cheap compared to other art, and vastly generic. It’s the kind of stuff that goes into mid-range luxury hotel rooms (luxury hotels can afford actual artwork, while cheap hotels just don’t adorn the walls very much).

And, since I vowed the other day to stop pulling punches in this blog …

It. Is. Not. Art.

Nope. I don’t care what you call it. I don’t care what the story calls it. I don’t care what the maker (I will not honor them with the term “artist”) calls it. NOT. ART.

How do I know? One way. Art, whatever else it might be, is designed to evoke emotion. Go to a museum; everything you see was created with the idea of evoking some kind of emotion. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko — even the most abstract of artists still sought to evoke emotion through vivid colors and patterns.

What makes art is emotion. You feel something when you look at it. It can be created to appeal to a wide audience, or a narrow audience. It can be created to say something universal, or something very specific. One can use a variety of media. Felix Gonzalez-Torres famously uses sugar-free candy in the exact weight his partner was when he died of AIDS to create his pieces. The first time I saw one of his works, I walked through the door of that room in the Art Institute of Chicago and thought, “What the ever-loving hell?” And then read the plaque. Result: emotion.

It’s surely up to you what you decorate your walls with. But I’d at least like you to consider that there could be something better than the “art” the furniture store tries to sell you along with your sofa. Consider letting us create something that you will feel a deep emotional connection with, for the rest of your life. There’s plenty of “beige” in the world already. Let your life have some color.

It’s important.

 

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I am not just a photographer.

I am not even primarily a photographer.

A few years ago someone introduced me by saying, “She really cares about people.” Despite the fact that this person disagrees with me politically and stealth un-friended me on Facebook, I thought, “He gets it.”

Someone who cares about people. That’s one thing.

To make a blog (or an Instagram or a Facebook page or whatever) all about one thing is anathema to me. I care about a LOT of things and I care about them all a LOT.

People. Animals. The environment. Families. Poverty. Justice. Running. Nature. Spirituality. Worship. God.

What’s more, I can’t separate any of those things from the other. In my writing, trust me, I will visit every single one of these topics and more. As I detailed in my first post of the “new blog,” I’m done tiptoeing around.

So a quick rundown of a few of the things I care about below.

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I’m a mom. I became a mom later in life, in my late 30s. I don’t take it for granted. Every moment of my kids’ life is precious … and yet even knowing this it seems like I miss so much!

I’m no longer married to the kids’ dad. I care a ton about relationships, and appreciating one another, and working on relationships, but it takes two people.

I bring all that experience, good and bad, to my couples’ shoots and my family shoots. Example: one thing we do in every family shoot is a quick “connection moment” with the couple, to create photos of their connection and how much they care about each other. This isn’t an afterthought for me. I go into every family session with the intention of creating something that will help this couple realize how much they love each other. I think once kids come along, couples can get distracted from the core of the family, which is the love they share. That love matters a LOT to me. If I can do nothing else, I want to create a few minutes for each family of putting the focus on that romance that got everything started!

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We are a kind society to the extent that we offer kind treatment to those who cannot speak for themselves.

Here’s a story from my journalism days: Starting out at my hometown paper, it was my job to call the first responders every morning. One morning I called our big burly fire chief, and he was in tears telling me about an incident that had happened the night before. It seems that they had been called out to a leaf fire, which turned out to be much worse. In fact, someone had doused a cat in gasoline and set the poor baby on fire, and it had then run, terrified, into a pile of leaves.

As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, the fire chief told me, and his brother the police officer backed him up, that “This is how it starts.” They said, almost always, when a violent criminal starts behaving violently, they start by being cruel to animals.

Valuing animals is not just important for individuals, it’s important for society.

It’s important not only to protect our pets, but to honor them for what they give to us. I find that many people are a little embarrassed by how very much they love and depend on their pets. But you can’t overstate the value of those fur babies in our lives. They love us, completely, unconditionally, until they cross over the rainbow bridge. They deserve our gratitude.

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I’ve always loved running, ever since I was a teenager going for runs up and down the country roads near my parents’ house.

I started running marathons with the very first Little Rock Marathon, and went on to do Pike’s Peak Marathon three times before my kids were born.

But by 2015, I was 60 pounds overweight — in fact, what doctors refer to as “obese” — tired all the time, very unhealthy, and extremely depressed. I was in a relationship that was slowly destroying me. You know what they say: “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” Well, it’s true. My kids picked up on my distress all the time. I couldn’t do the things I wanted to with them. I was always sad. Even worse: my dad passed away in January of 2015, from a heart attack. With heart disease on both sides of my family, as well as diabetes and high blood pressure in my family history, the writing seemed to be on the wall for me.

Came a watershed moment for me in August 2015, when I saw how my brother had already lost 80 pounds since my dad passed away. I thought, “I can do that too.” At that point, I wasn’t running or even doing much of anything. I had to change my diet.

But I did. I started watching what I ate, which was something I had never been willing to do before. As I got more energy, I started to exercise more. I started to enjoy exercise, too. In fact, I started to really find joy in running. Encouraged by my wonderful running friends, I started trying to qualify for Pike’s Peak Marathon again, and I surprised myself by actually doing it.

After setting a PR (personal record) at Pike’s Peak in 2016, I started looking at longer races. I paced a friend for Arkansas Traveler 100 mile race in October 2016. Watching her cross the finish line, I got bitten by the ultra running bug in a big way. I had found a fantastic community of people who spanned a surprising range of abilities and backgrounds. However, we all have one thing in common: we love getting outdoors and MOVING!

I’m all for moving, for fitness, for doing what you can. Recently I have realized that I have a frustrated (until now) passion for helping inspire people to get moving. For helping people make the life-changing decisions that can alter not only their fitness, but their relationships with each other and the world around them.

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I grew up poor.

Not welfare poor. Not homeless poor. But that kind of poor that is by far the most common kind among Americans: respectable poor. The kind where you don’t want to accept a handout. Where you work for what you get. Where you take the best job you can get and do your best at that job. And yet, this is the kind of poor that certain sectors of the American economy have set themselves to prey upon.

From payday lending to “emergency” loan checks in the mail, the working poor can be victims precisely because they DO want to be self-sufficient. With so much confusion surrounding money and lending, it’s hard to be an expert on everything that could happen to you, when you’re just trying to live your life and get by.

Money can be a tough subject in a luxury business like photography. I want to help people get what they want, and I never assume someone doesn’t have the means to do so (because that’s really insulting). Here’s how I integrate my caring about YOUR finances into MY business:

1. I respect your purchase and the fact that you’ve chosen to invest in artwork. My paying customers come first in my business.

2. I provide payment plans that let you split your payments into manageable portions.

3. If you do choose financing, I will always be as upfront as possible about the repayment arrangements. I’ve had the good fortune to find lending institutions locally who have great rates — far better than you will usually get from your credit card company!

4. I have a variety of products available, with no minimum purchase and no packages. Why no packages? Because packages are designed to upsell you by bundling things together whether you really need them or not. Packages provide “perceived value,” which is a totally different thing than ACTUAL value. All my products are curated, beautiful, top-quality products. You CAN have nice things — really, you can.

5. I support local economic development, especially in the Little Rock Downtown area. A rising tide lifts all boats, and when we work together we will see more opportunity for everyone!

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I’ve always loved trees.

I grew up surrounded by nature. The thing that made me happiest (and the place I still return to mentally when I need a boost) is the creek that runs below my parents’ house. It was, and is, pristine: a spring-fed creek that originates on our private property, that is, for the most part, untouched. You can wade barefoot there. Growing up, we drank the water with no ill effects.

I’m not a nature photographer because I don’t seem to be skilled in seeing that way — maybe because I’m too busy being absorbed in nature to really photograph it. But I do feel I have a contribution, and it comes from my overall business philosophy.

You see, we value the wrong things. Oh, I know we SAY we value our family, our relationships — yet most often we put our money towards useless crap, throwaway bids at happiness that only make us happy for a little while. We buy a TV that shows us shows we like, but also ads that stress us out and make us want to buy more useless crap. Even the TV itself only satisfies us until something bigger and better comes out. Same with phones, electronic devices. We get a great car that makes us happy until the “new car smell” wears off — or until a friend or neighbor gets a better car.

The truth is, everything we are sold these days is designed to make us just a little dissatisfied. That’s so we will feel restless enough to come back and buy the next thing, and the next, and so on …

Well, ALMOST everything. The photographic artwork you choose, designed from photos that are planned and created with the things you value most in mind — those are designed to make you completely, highly satisfied. You will keep them for a lifetime. You will add to them, sure, but you won’t get rid of them. They are heirlooms, treasures that you will past on to your children, that will be treasured and appreciated by your children’s children.

My dream is that you will find yourself satisfied for just a few minutes each day, and that feeling this way will leave you less tempted to buy things that really aren’t wanted or needed. That you can awake every day to artwork that makes you feel gratitude for what you have already, and joy that pushes out the feelings of inadequacy that advertisers love to exploit.

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Religion isn’t a subject we talk about much these days, but at least around here, it’s one we think about.

Especially in business, we tend to steer clear of potentially offending people.

I don’t believe an open discussion of God is offensive. If you try to make me believe what you believe, yes, that’s offensive. But valuing someone’s faith and deep-seated belief? Not offensive.

When I say I value God and religion, don’t take that to mean, ever, at all, that I want you to think like me. In fact, the opposite: I want to know what you think! I know that’s unusual, and hard to get used to. You’re probably used to people inviting you to church, telling you how to “get saved,” or assuring you that you’re going to hell, or telling you why something you care about is wrong.

I don’t want to tell … I want to know. What’s meaningful to you? What values do you want your children to grow up with? What symbols hold power for you?

I’ve talked to Hindu families, attended the Islamic Center of Little Rock, celebrated with (and had a wonderful lunch with) Buddhists from Southeast Asia, participated in a Native American spiritual gathering, and spoken with pagans and Pentecostals. I’ve been deeply moved at unexpected times. If there’s one thing I know about God, it’s that God is much bigger than the little boxes we construct to try to define the Divine for our own limited understandings.

I’m not out to convince anyone of anything. I want to hear you. Maybe I’ll expand my own understanding in the process.

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As of today there is a new blogger at Mariposa Studio.

Me.

The real me.

When I hit publish on this post, as of that moment, it’s a different blog.

Because, I just can’t any longer.

When I first started my website and blog, I was cautioned to “keep it business.” That it should be all photography-centered, and “professional,” and above the fray.

I know there are so many different opinions about this, and I’m not out to convince anyone to do what I’m doing, which is to — not wade in — but jump in the deep end of being personal and even, sometimes, political. I just know that the picture-centered, professional, above-the-fray blog style is not for me.

I’m a journalist, a storyteller, opinionated, rich in experience. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot. I’ve been a lot. And as our society seemingly becomes more fragmented, it’s really impossible to blend in. Honestly, there’s no point in trying. You can’t fail to notice that I have same-sex couples in my portfolio. Even the most cursory look at my work will tell you I care about animals. And, notwithstanding my efforts to be impersonal, there’s some very personal stuff already on this blog.

But this morning, I was glancing at Facebook, keeping up with my friends and their understandable frustrations with today’s world, and twice, I thought, “I wish I had a blog.” And of course then immediately said to myself, “But … you DO have a blog.” And then back to myself, “But I can’t …”

“Why can’t you?”

(Yes, I talk to myself this way. I bet you do too.)

Because people might disagree? I guarantee there are already people who disagree. But what I do is so personal, so intimate. Photography at its best is capturing your greatest loves, your dearest values, the things you keep closest to your heart. I’m asking my clients so many personal questions every day. It feels wrong to hide myself from them.

So there are people who won’t want to do business with me because they disagree with me? So what? If they are basing their decisions on the fact that I chose for my business to be loving and inclusive, then that’s not really my problem now is it?

Because it’s not relevant? But you know what? It really IS relevant. My clients invite me into their lives, their homes, their very relationships. I’ve been invited into immigrant families, arranged marriages, struggling families, families with disabled children, same-sex relationships, open relationships … you name it. I’ve been invited there because somehow all those beautiful people figured out I wouldn’t judge them by MY standards. They allowed me the privilege to see them as the amazing people that they are. I don’t take that privilege for granted! Which means, yes, it’s relevant that I’m accepting of immigrants, of life choices and relationship styles, of all the little differences and quirks and unusualness that distinguishes one human from another.

So it’s time I “came out” as a person who cares. Who really wants to see compassion in both private and public life. Who welcomes and yearns for people to come together and solve problems, instead of standing on our two sides yelling at each other.

I don’t see myself solving the world’s problems. In the words of a favorite singer-songwriter:

“I am a voice that’s calling out
Across the great Divide
But I’m only just one person
Who feels they have to try.”
-Carrie Newcomer

But a voice. I can be a voice. And I will.

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I’m sure you’ve heard of Dog Shaming, the phenomenon where you share a photo of your dog with a sign telling what they did wrong.

I love these — not only are they hilarious but they also emphasize how we love our pets, even when they aren’t on their best behavior.

But I also want to take it in the other direction. Isn’t it time we also gave a shout out to all the ways our pets are awesome?

So fill out the form below with a brief word about how your fur baby is amazing. We’ll pick six finalists to receive $250 gift certificates, and from those finalists we will pick one person to recieve an additional $750 towards their photographic artwork!

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Any information collected will only be used for the purposes of Mariposa Studio, and will not be shared with anyone. One entry per household. Offer may not be combined with other gift certificates or promotions. You must fill out all fields for your entry to be valid. Every prize package includes planning for your customized photographic experience, a session in our studio in downtown Little Rock, a personalized design consultation where we choose your favorite photos and create artwork that you will love to display in your home, and money towards your artwork. Prizes are transferable but not redeemable for cash. Winners will be selected by the studio and all decisions are final. For questions or clarification call 501-517-0962. Rude comments, remarks, or disparaging language towards others on blog posts or social media are not permitted by the studio and will be deleted.

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There’s a huge myth in this industry, and it’s time it was exposed.

This is a myth that we photographers have been feeding you for years, maybe since professional photography began. We’ve based entire businesses on it, we’ve based our professional organizations and award structures around it. We’ve created a system of merit — actually, several different systems of merit — built around this myth.

Problem is, it’s false. And its falsity strikes at the fundamental nature of the photography business. At the very name of “the photography business.”

We think it’s about photographs.

It’s not.

You can’t blame us. Photographers love photography. We love pretty pictures, and the things it takes to get those pictures. We love camera equipment and lighting and trying new things. We love catchy props and cool ideas. We love sofas in fields and beautiful golden light and fall leaves.

Those things are cool … but it’s not about that.

So what is it about?

One thing.

One thing our industry is about: relationships. Every wonderful photo is about relationships. I’ll even extend that to landscape photographers, or at least the great ones: Ansel Adams undeniably had an emotional relationship with Yosemite and the other landscapes he photographed.

As photographers we get fixated on cool products, on fun displays, on albums and wall art — and all those things are wonderful, but they are nothing without the relationship.

As it turns out, what is important to you, is the very thing that is most important to us … or should be. It’s love, connections, the light in someone’s eyes. It’s how you feel about your grandma, or your best friend, or your cat, or yourself.

It’s all in the relationships. Even with business photography: it’s the relationships with your clients, your team, your potential customer.

Which turns out to be one of my favorite things to think about and write about … and blog about.

A new year is coming and you should expect to see more about relationships: what makes them good, what makes them work, what makes them make our hearts sing. It’s something I’ve been thinking about: A LOT! I bet we all do.

This is no longer a photography blog; it’s a relationship blog. Because relationships are the only thing that can truly make a photo valuable to us.

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In 2012, more than a year after the Joplin tornado, I adopted a cat. She was a tiny kitten I found while staying at a church camp outside of town.

The shock came when I tried to take her to the animal shelter. They said they were still, more than a year later, overwhelmed by the influx of animals that came in after the tornado.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, animal rescuers picked up 26 dogs and two cats before Hurricane Irma — left in a yard, in a pen they couldn’t escape from, tethered to trees.

In Texas, shelters moved the animals already in their care to other states to make way for the influx of lost animals they knew would come from Hurricane Harvey.

And covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, one of the saddest sights I witnessed was a dog wandering through the rubble, obviously shell-shocked, looking for home.

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Even as humans still struggle to deal with the aftermath of hurricanes, the need can stretch over many more months for the animal victims, as shelters try to reunite animals with their families. Because many shelters make this their first priority (instead of adopting out what might be a cherished family pet) the overcrowding and financial need can continue for months, even, as I saw, more than a year.

That’s why I’m donating every pet session fee to the SPCA relief efforts until the end of October.

It’s a need that can easily go overlooked, but we love all fur babies at Mariposa Studio, and want to do what we can, so we are donating all of our planning and shooting time to raise money for this cause!

Contact us today to see how you and your own fur baby can be a part of this wonderful project!

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