Month: September 2012

When I was a kid, I dreamed of so many things I wanted to do when I “grew up”. The one that really stuck (at least through high school and early college) was that I wanted to cut hair and own my own beauty salon. I always wanted to own it. I wanted it to be mine.

Along the way, things changed (obviously) and that dream never came to fruition. I blame it all on the advanced accounting class I tried to take my freshman year of college. I grossly overestimated my ability to handle that class and dropped it after the second week. Then I changed my major from Business Management to Psychology. Oh, how I wish I could go back and tell my younger self what a stupid idea that was! (And I now do accounting on a daily basis for my full-time job!)

After I got my B.S. in Psychology, I went on and started on a Master’s of Social Work. One year into the program I decided I couldn’t finish it. One year of classes and more added college loans left me with no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I ended up in a temporary job that I have now been at for over 10 years.

Along the way I’ve dabbled in lots of different things. For a while I was convinced I could and would be a web designer, even though I had no background in design. I set up a web site and toyed with the idea of starting up a company. Then I had a baby and that whole idea fizzled out. It is a little hard to code on no sleep, with a crying baby in your lap.

The idea of wanting a business of my own never has gone away. It has stayed in the back of my mind for years, always as a dream, not a reality.

Then came photography. Photography has been a gradual journey for me. I have always loved taking pictures (as I can prove with the staged photos of my stuffed animals when I was a kid), but it wasn’t until I was finally able to afford my first SLR camera that I really pushed myself to learn about photography. I had no idea what an f-stop was, or ISO, or shutter speed. Little by little I figured it out and my love grew bigger than I ever imagined.

Last year I finally saw a little piece of my dream come true. I started my own business. I worked hard to figure out all the details and actually set it up as a legal business. Caleb threw a little bit of a wrench into my overall plan, but things are steadily growing. I’m learning a lot as I go along, including just how time consuming a little part-time business can be. I dream of it one day becoming full-time and being able to support my family doing something that I truly love. There is just no way to describe the feeling of joy it brings me when a client loves the photograph that I’ve poured my heart and soul into. It really is true that when you are doing what you love, it doesn’t feel like work at all.

I’ve got a long way to go to fulfill my dream, but the fact that I have started shows me that I do have it in me. I really believe that I will get there some day.

————————————-

If you would like to keep up with my photography journey, please visit and “like” my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/deeperrinphotography.  You can also follow the blog at http://www.deeperrinphotography.com, where I plan to be updating more frequently (soon!).