Tag Archives: photography

So Excited and Happy I’m Crying

Some days are actually good days!

I just logged onto my Zazzle store, expecting nothing to have changed as I haven’t been able to do anything to it in a long time thanks to all of the headaches I’ve been dealing with lately. But, to my surprise, that wasn’t the case. Instead…

I SOLD MY FIRST PHOTOGRAPHY MUG!!!

Now, that may not seem like a huge deal at first. But, I have never sold any of my photography. So that means… I AM NOW A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER!

Not only that, but it was a nature photograph. I AM NOW A PROFESSIONAL NATURE PHOTOGRAPHER!!!!

I have wanted to be able to say I am a professional nature photographer for an extremely long time. My dream, since I was a small child (age 4 or younger), has been to be a National Geographic photographer. When I was about 12 or so, I won second place in an amateur photographer contest held by the San Diego Zoo (not for children, it was open to all ages and all equipment types and was advertised on a clapboard in the middle of the entrance path at the zoo itself) with my single megapixel digital camera with a picture of bison at Yellowstone National Park. This is something I have been working for and dreaming about FOREVER!!!!!!

I am shaking so hard and crying and smiling from ear to ear and I’m so happy I could explode!!!! I literally do not care how symptomatic I am right now and I just want to celebrate and YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what that I only made 84 cents on the sale? It still makes me a professional by the definition as someone “paid to participate in an activity,” so I’m happy!

So what did I sell that has made me so happy? This:

 

It seems very interesting, doesn’t it? I’ve been wishing for so long to be a nature photographer, to make money doing the one thing I’ve loved me entire life, and my first photography sale happens to be a product with that very word on it. I believe synchronicity would be the right word…

Anyway, I just had to tell pretty much everyone 🙂

I’m alive. Really, I am.

Wednesday was insane. Anyone that hasn’t noticed, I live in the Denver area. So, yes, Wednesday there was a blizzard. At my house, I got TWO FEET of snow. Yes, two feet. Yikes! If you don’t know, a blizzard isn’t actually characterized by snowfall (it can snow very little) but by wind and visibility; to be a blizzard wind must be consistently over 35 miles per hour and the visibility must be less than 1/2 a mile (due to blowing snow) for more than 3 hours in a row. This blizzard also came with crazy huge amounts of snowfall. Everything was cancelled, and the airport closed completely for over eight hours. Sadly, instead of just enjoying the snow day, I was stressed about Dan because he was trying to get home from a business trip and it wasn’t going so well (due to the airport being closed). Thankfully, he managed to get home Thursday morning instead of Saturday like many of his coworkers. Here are some photos from Wednesday:

At about 7:30am it didn’t look too bad. You can still see some of the road even (just over the wall there) and we’ve only gotten about 3-4 inches of snow. Visibility kind of stinks, but it’s not awful yet.
The windows on the north side of the house have iced up pretty well though (at about 8am).
I’d say this is about noon. As you can see, it’s snowing quite hard, and we have a LOT of snow now. It’s incredibly blustery, and visibility is terrible (that wall is really close to my house).
Everything is starting to ice up, even south facing windows, and you can see we have even MORE snow now (look at the pickets on the gate between this pic and the last one). There is only about a 3 hour difference between this pic and the last one, maybe.
It’s done snowing, mostly, and there isn’t much of a step down anymore. Normally, you walk out of my sliding glass door and the porch is about two feet below… The snow is currently over the height of the metal frame on the door.
We got a LOT of snow!

I Survived the Blizzard

march18 snowing es signed

Today is 35°F and snowing. The official first day of spring is this Sunday (the 20th). It doesn’t look very springy out.

I like the snow, I really do. However, my depression is not liking it right now. To pick myself up, I’ve been making some springy designs on Zazzle. Hopefully, they can pick you guys up too. (Daffodils are my favorite flower, so the first one is my favorite and I actually made 6 different products with that picture.)

 

Click here to see more designs

Spring is Coming

New Venture

Hey everyone! I decided to try to start a Zazzle shop, in the hopes that I’ll be able to actually make some sales with my photography that way! I haven’t finished customizing the storefront, but I did get one item up for sale. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Red Panda Puzzle – Lounging by FindingTheSilverSun
Browse Zazzle for a different jigsaw puzzle

What other kinds of images and products would you like to see? I have a lot of ideas, so what things would you like to see first?

So I took a ton of photos at Zion National Park. Here are a few of my favorites:

(more…)

Zion National Park Photos

Part of the gorgeous back road from Richfield, UT to Zion National Park
The geography is stunning!
Random lake
The road to Zion
Oh! A canyon!
❤
Almost there

I took a ton of photos at Zion National Park (about 50), so I’ll hopefully get them posted tomorrow. But for now, here are some pictures of our drive to Zion 🙂 I didn’t take any photos from the first day of our “to California” trip, because the weather sucked and then it was dark! I also didn’t take many after Zion… but that’s just because it’s mostly desert that I’ve seen a million times and didn’t see anything unique.

Driving to Cali (Thanksgiving Break)