The One Picture That Helped Me Become A Pro Photographer

This picture is called ‘Solitude’ and this image along with three others showed me that I was called to be a nature photographer and that my life could become so much more than I could ever dream.

Shortly after the end of a 7 year relationship/engagement I found myself lost.  Much of my 20’s had been spent on the arm of a successful federal politician, living a high life in the capital of Canada.  During that season when a twenty-something should be finding herself, I was simply finding him and my role in life next to him.  In 2009, I made the hard choice and bid farewell to that life.

Walking away left me with nothing and so began the journey of finding who I was called to be.

I moved to a beautiful small town close to the banks of the Ohio river.  By day I helped people purchase homes in the mortgage banking world, and by nights and weekends I could be found exploring and delighting in every back road I could get my tires on.  My precious father had given me his old 2-door Jeep wrangler, and my $450 apartment was all I needed.  Inside it was quiet and cozy.  My couch had been picked up on the side of the road that someone had left for trash.

That simple, quiet life was a polar opposite to the life I had lived the year before, and yet the beauty that I found in those moments hiking through the woods and long conversations with sweet southern folks were and are still precious to me.

One of those early Saturday mornings I drove down to the banks of the Ohio river and found it cloaked in fog, with the dock standing silently still.  I knew it was a simple moment waiting to be captured.  I put my camera on “auto” (which was all I knew at the time) and snapped a picture.

Never once in that moment or those days of solitude did I realize that I was embarking on the greatest adventure of my life.  I was simply following my heart, making myself available to observe the beauty in nature, and mostly looking for balm to heal my heart with a resolute determination to find who I was called to be.

The moral to this post is this:  No matter where you are, how broken that heart of yours may be, how limited your knowledge or simple your camera, never ever stop exploring the places that call to your heart and following the paths that will lead you to greater wonders than you can ever imagine.

This is only the start of my journey….check back for the rest of the story.