Most of us dream that our passion will one day become our jobs, that we can spend our days doing what we love, be it carpentry, quilting, crochet, knitting, photography, fishing, gaming, racing, running, etc, etc.

How wonderful that would be.

I once had this overwhelming passion for photography, I saw photos everywhere and in everything. I wanted and needed to capture time, moments and life, preserving it forever.
I believed and still believe that our eyes are like camera shutters and that we can freeze time but making memories or capturing those moments, those incredibly important memories with a blink of the eye or camera button.
With a camera or mobile phone even an iPad/tablet in our hands, the world holds endless possibilities.
Photographs are probably/most definitely the most important thing in my materialistic life, they have to be the one thing I would rescue if our home was on fire.
If they are lost damaged or destroyed, you can never get them back.
They are priceless treasures, that many of us don’t realise there importance until they are lost or a loved one dies.

So when I got asked to work as a professional photographer I jumped at the chance, I lapped it up and enjoyed every minute of it.
My passion became my life, my dream had come true. I was doing what I loved everyday and was learning more than I ever thought would be possible, not just about photography but about myself.

You see when you become a Mother, in a small way you loose part of yourself. Your children become the most important treasured human beings in your life and you give them your all.
Your happiness depends on their happiness, your time becomes theirs, your self worth doesn’t matter as long as you are giving your children the best you can give them.
They are the be all and end all, you love, live and breathe through them.
It’s the most special, valuable job in the world, a job that takes over every part of your heart and soul.

But those babies grow older, more independent, they form their own characters, and blossom into little human-beings.
They no longer need you as much as they once did, they need to live and learn through their own experiences so you have to let go of those apron strings and let them flourish, even though it breaks your heart to do so.
Doing so, leaves the most humongous empty hole in your life, the life you gave to them.
You have been Mum or Dad for so long, you no longer know who you are!
Of course you are still Mum or Dad, but your hours have been cut, leaving you lost and unsure of how you get back to the person who you once were before you had them or how you fill not only your days but you mind and your heart . How do you survive without being their everything?

So of course when I was offered the job, I took it and I learnt so much more than photography, I learnt to be me again.
I learnt independence, strength, courage and self-worth but in true honesty, it didn’t even come close to the feelings of being needed as a Mum.
The passion that once pumped through my veins, was replaced with an ache that only a parent and wife could feel or understand. I desperately missed being there for them 24/7.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved my job, I truly loved it and I had grown so much due to the new challenges and the wonderful people I worked with, but they weren’t my family, they weren’t the smiling happy faces of my two boys, they weren’t the loving embraced of my husband.
Yes I had the most incredible opportunity’s, I had the world at my finger tips, and yes I was actually good at something, I was achieving my wildest dreams but with that came an emptiness that can not be explained in words, it can only be felt.
The passion I had, faded and was replaced with longing for what I knew and that was to be a Mother and a Wife.
My longing for my family won hands down and I returned to being the Mum that wasn’t needed 24/7 and the wife who kept house.
And as I once again became who I really am, Mum, my passion for photography died.
I’ve tried many times since to pick back up my camera, to capture the perfect photo, the photo all photographers dream and strive to capture. The impossible photograph!!!!

One day while we were having a family day out at Longleat, for my niece Ashlin’s Birthday, it suddenly clicked, what photography really meant to me and why my passion had completely disappeared.
I had been looking through the camera lens all wrong.
It isn’t about capturing that perfect (impossible) photo, it about capturing life.
It’s not about light and shadows, it’s about heart and soul.
Passion is what runs through me because I love my family, they are my passion, they own my heart but more so they own my soul.

I can now clearly see that the only photographs I want to take are our life’s, our interests, our hobbies, our smiles, our frowns, our sadness, our laughter, our SOULS.

I want to capture and document time,
the time of our lives!!!