Hiatus | Personal Reflection

I'm not sorry for the quiet this week.

And I especially won't be sorry for the quiet next week.

I'm leaving my everyday home to go to my once-upon-a-time homes where there are people who don't get to see me nearly as much as they should, but still love me a whole lot. Scratch that. Who don't get to see us nearly as much as they should, but still love us a whole lot. Because, who am I kidding? My family is just as excited to see Cliff as they are to see me, and I like it that way.

I intend to soak it up, like the glorious sunlight this week that has brought and is bringing with it all of the wonder of the seasons ahead. How perfectly the earth begins to rise out of itself in this season in which I, myself, personally celebrate the new life that has been given to me in the life and resurrection of Jesus.

For those celebrating, I hope you have a wonderful holiday, and for all, I wish you a beautiful week ahead!

Mid-Atlantic Sessions | Maryland & Virginia Portrait Photography

I am a mid-Atlantic girl, born and raised. No matter how much time I spend in Tennessee, that fact will never escape my story!

Right around Easter, Cliff and I will be making a long-awaited extended trip to visit my family in Maryland and Virginia. Cliff for a couple of days in both places, and me for a little longer. I can't tell you how good it will be to just be home.

My family is incredible and in the last year, it's just been increasingly difficult to make the time to get there and then just be there. It often feels like we arrive and minutes later, we have to head back.

Not this time, though.

So while our main and most important focus will be getting in plenty of time with family, I would also like to take advantage of the possibility of opening up some travel portrait sessions to folks in the mid-Atlantic area. Some of you have expressed the regretful longing of my not being closer and your wistful thinking has been heard!

Session availabililty for Central Maryland will be April 5-6 and Hampton Roads, Virginia, April 8-9. In order to make the most of my time with family, I will only be offering three sessions per location.

Please e-mail me at kristine@kristineneeley.com to get your session scheduled as soon as possible.

Looking forward to it!

Why, Why, WPPI? | Personal Reflection

Sometimes, I wish deep down inside that I was the cool kid. Like Meg. The girl I knew in elementary school who was never without an invite to everyone's birthday parties and sleepovers. When me? I may have gotten one out of every five distributed in cute little cubby holes and stuck inside open desks.

Maybe it's because I was tall for my age. Or maybe it was the freckles. Or maybe it was just that I didn't go out of my way to make myself a likeable person by liking others very well.* I think I learned that lesson the first time in fourth grade when it dawned on me that I couldn't recall the last time I went out of my way to do something nice for people. And so, I made the decision to have a Halloween party and invite everyone in my class. Well, all of the girls at least. Boys, of course, still had cooties at this stage in their development.

And wouldn't you know it, they came. Even a clique of girls who kept me at arms-length from their lunch table came to my house for a boo-fest inspired by my need to be liked. To be cool. I mean, not that stringing spiderwebs across your house or hanging garbage bags from the tree out front is cool, but whatever. They came. They ate my party food, slept on my living room floor, and they even managed to (seem to) have a good time.

I find myself thinking about that same need-to-be-cool premise a lot now as a photographer. And more specifically, a portrait photographer, in an age where there are so many who have come before and so many yet to enter the scene.

Oh boy, I said it. The scene.

Yep. It's true. There's a photography scene. And it makes me quiver in my fourth-grade bike shorts and baggy sweatshirts all over again. Because in some circles, it's about image. And in others, it's about art. And even, strangely enough, there's the circle where all the cool-cat business-types congregate. And me? I just feel royally un-cool.

So when faced with the prospect of attending WPPI (only the biggest, most well-known annual come-together of professional photographers), I initally wanted nothing to do with it. Wouldn't touch the prospect with a ten-foot pole, because why would I, an un-cool kid, immerse myself in a world where I'm likely to be shocked and awed by everyone else to the point of self-loathing? It's self-esteem-suicide.

And then I woke up one day and asked a very important question: Or is it?

Because I guess, in that moment, I started looking at WPPI like that Halloween party. While sure, I'm not the one doing the inviting, someone important sometime ago made the decision that at this convention, the cool kids and the uncool kids and all of us inbetween would sleep and party on the proverbial floors of each other's lives for a couple of days. Everyone who wields a camera and makes some money from it (even if just occasionally) can pack their bags and come to Las Vegas for a couple of days of shock-and-awe. But even more importantly, they can come for community.

We are all, each and every one of us photographers, a part of something amazing. We do with our hands and eyes and hearts what a lot of people only dream of. And we've all got something to learn and gain from each other. WPPI, to me, represents the ultimate in bringing together everything that is fantastic about our industry. And now? I would love to go and not only see what all the cool kids are up to but to learn.

To embrace in its fullness all that is in store in the days ahead, whether I'm a "cool kid" or not. Because really, at this point in life, who cares? And isn't cool just relative term anyways?

So does that answer your question, Lawrence?

p.s. you can e-mail me here.

*Now that I think about it, maybe it was the bike shorts and baggy sweatshirts...

Oregon Series - Oregon Travel Photography

A Month (and more) Ago - PartnerCon 2009

Dream. Create. Inspire.

Three words that, to me, hold such much life inside of them. And yet, I don't think on them, believe them, live them out the way I should. But sometimes, life puts you in an unexpected place with a lot of people you don't know, and gives you the greatest gift in the continual and consistent reminder that we all have something to offer but that it's a process.

A month ago, plus a couple of days, I hopped in an SUV with some of my good friends and employers Zach & Jody and fellow photographers Jessica McIntosh and David Molnar to ride eight hours to New Orleans for an incredible three-day conference put on by Pictage. Formally called Pictage Partner Conference, but known lovingly as PartnerCon, this event is a meeting of all sorts of minds and skills and styles in the photography world, which just so happened to be in a city (and state) I'd never been to and hadn't ever really done much in the way of planning to visit.

And it's a good thing I didn't plan anything, because for the first time ever I was at a conference where I didn't want to miss a thing. Instead of looking at a program and deciding between choosing something relatively enticing and sight-seeing, like I am used to, I was actually having to choose between sessions. Making the choice to go to sessions at any given time during the day was probably as complicated as anything I've done in the last three months of my life, including buying our first home. I mean really, you're really asking me to decide who I want to see when really I want to see everyone?!

But choose, I did, and for the most part I was pleasantly surprised - enticed - encouraged - and challenged by everything I heard in a matter of just a couple of days. From the art of photography to the nitty-gritty of branding, my world was rocked. Whether it was Jeff & Erin Youngren, Amber Holritz, Justin & Mary Marantz, or Jared Platt, words were spoken and lessons were shared over and over again which ring in my mind and heart as echoes, now. Reminders that the ability to capture life - for yourself or for art or for others - is a gift and that we all find our own way to make it work but that we truly have a great deal to learn from each other. And the each other part was key, because my whole world was opened up to new photographer friends all over the country like Jennifer Tai, Audra Bayette, and more!

And not only did I learn by hearing, but doing as well. Wednesday I participated in a workshop led by the Youngrens where none other than Zach & Jody worked as models. It was a new experience to take pictures of them, but a fun one for sure.

I managed to capture as much of the city as I could, considering how much of it I ended up seeing.

All I could think, with the announcement that PartnerCon 2010 would be back in New Orleans, was that maybe that will be my chance to see and to take in the culture the city is so famous for. And of course, to grab a couple more beignets because at least I got that much out of the city and that's enough for me, especially considering the overabundance of what I walked away with from the conference.

Travel Photography: Washington

A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. - Steinbeck

I love to travel. It's the sort of act that, for me, is thrilling beyond my best descriptions. It doesn't matter if I'm somewhere I've been a thousand times over or in a new place, just get me out there. A trip here and there is just enough of the best stuff in life: adventure, beauty, discovery, challenges. Enough to remind you that it is often more about the journey than the destination.

I blame it all on John Steinbeck. No really, I do. Some ten or eleven years ago, reading Travels with Charley opened up my eyes to the joy that is discovering story in the act of packing, setting out, and interacting with the people and places that make up a journey.

So for our second anniversary, as is our custom so far, we packed up, picked up, and flew out. This time for the Northwest - Washington, specifically. I have been enough times to feel a sort of comfort in the climbing mountains, mystic shores, and overwhelming depth of Washington's emerald landscapes. However, this was Cliff's first time.

I think we'd both agree that of all the places we've been together so far and of all the trips we've taken, this might have been our favorite. But as we've learned over time, we dare not say it was our favorite because it is apt to be outdone in trips to come. For each holds its own power and wonder, and as Steinbeck said, no two are alike.

Revisiting Monuments

Growing up on the East Coast, I think I have taken for granted the fantastic history that sits at the foundation of the littering of lighthouses and monuments lining the Atlantic. With my dad's side, we have spent one week of almost every summer in the Outer Banks. And along with each visit to the beach, there was always that requisite visit to any nearby lighthouse.

But for some reason, maybe now that I am older and understand that relics and monuments of a certain day are set within a story and not just a time, I'm fascinated by them. It might be that I have come to appreciate something not everyone, like my husband, has grown up around and choose to see it from the lens of someone just visiting.

So during a visit to my mom's in the spring, she suggested we take a little daytrip across the North Carolina Board to Kitty Hawk and Nags Head to show Cliff a little more of what the Eastern Seaboard has to offer. (I've run out of places to show him in my hometown of Virginia Beach). Wielding my camera and my new (at least since the last time I went to Kitty Hawk and Nags Head) penchant for any and everything related to the National Park System, I felt like a tourist in a place I have never felt like a tourist. And gosh, it was great.

It made me notice things I'd never imagined seeing as a little girl, and I am thankful for the seasoning that time offers one's perspective on the beauty of our country and its history.

Details: [Chickamauga]

From our New Year's trip...



finally finding time to do some more editing.