Beauty in the Breakdown

in this life

This weekend, I lived a dream. A girl that used to babysit me, Allison Davis-Satterfield, also a professional photographer, let me shadow her for two days. We shot a wedding and then did pictures with Santa at a fancy country club. The first stop for the weekend was the beauty salon. My first photographer's tip? "Watch out for the hairdressers, they like their hairspray, and you don't want it on your lens." The next stop was the church for detail shots. The decorations were so pretty. We then went to the festival house, where the reception was to be held. We got a few pictures there, than headed back to the church to get pictures of the little parts that make up a wedding: rings, flowers, dress and shoes, etc. The best thing in the world is watching Allison lay on her belly under the desk in the Pastor's study to get the perfect angle of the dress hanging on the bookshelf. Next came the shoes and garter. She shot those on a table in a sunday school room, and you'd never notice. We went to do the rings and flowers, and I couldn't pass up taking this picture. The bouquet was so pretty, and I just had to snap one of my own. It was sitting on a changing table in the nursery. I showed Allison the picture and she told me the most meaningful thing she could ever say. She said, "That's when you know you're meant to be a photographer, Sara." By this, she meant that you can take something gross and make it beautiful if you have the right eye. You'd never be able to tell that picture was taken on a baby changing table. I've never been one that enjoyed taking pictures of objects, people are my "thing". I have never felt better about my photography than I did when Allison told me how good my work was. I was practically beaming, and my weekend couldn't have gone better. The lesson I learned? There's beauty in everything. Whether it be a baby table or an unhappy heart, there's always some good, somewhere. For example: well, a big example would be life. In life, things go wrong, yes, but do we ever stop and think of how much worse it could be? Yes, there are people that have it harder than you, but that's not what I'm getting at. When something goes wrong, you should step back and think of the good things that are happening at the exact same time. When the beautiful sun sets, it's a bit saddening, but there's always stars that follow.