Spotlight on Stigma... Welcomed but Not Accepted

It seems like lately the only time I have to blog is when I'm at a shoot - and have downtime between sessions. So, here I am, at an Indycar race in Lexington, Ohio at the Mid-Ohio course, finally getting a chance to blog.  Being in media has some really high highs - and some really low lows. I guess that's really like most jobs, though.  It seems like everything was thrown at me this past week - so much so that I seriously considered not coming. However, this is one of the biggest dreams that my husband has had. He grew up really close to this track and this is where he fell in love with Indycar racing.  Once he picked up photography, he had one of those dreams that's so big that you can't even really dream it - it's just an underlying, very, very small nudge that it would be wonderful if it ever happened. His dream was to shoot an Indycar race as a credentialed photographer. In fact, the hope that he could shoot a race at Mid-Ohio was barely a flicker of a dream. T

I couldn't believe that the weekend had finally arrived. It started off being very nerve-racking. My husband didn't get off work until noon on the day we needed to leave so it was going to be tight to get there in time to get our credentials at best.  Then, of course, things happened... having last minute, unplanned things we had to do before leaving and really bad traffic - worse than we had planned for. On the way, we discussed what we needed to do first when we got into town. We had planned to go to check-in where we were staying first, then go to the venue (the Opryland Convention Center) to get our media passes, with a quick stop at one of the book signings on the way to getting our credentials. Since we were delayed, we skipped the hotel and almost ran into the venue to get our media passes, realizing quickly that we couldn't find where to pick them up using the description that had been emailed to us.  As the clock ticked... and my heart beat... faster and louder and

There have been so many things that have happened in the past year that are so big I couldn't even dream that high. This one was especially amazing, mostly because of a part of my past I've almost forgotten about. I grew up around music. My brothers, who are nine and ten years older than me, started a garage band in their early teens. I started piano lessons when I was around six or seven. My mom always sang in the church choir and I sang in both church and school choirs from a young age. As a teenager, maybe 14 or 15 years old, I picked up a guitar. My brother gave me his old 12-string. (Fun fact... DON'T learn how to tune a guitar on a 12-string. It will scar you for life.) He showed me some simple chords, taught me a few ear-training basics, and let me go.  I never heard of anyone taking guitar lessons back then. I know it was done, but since guitar was an "easy" instrument, I learned how to play on my own. I had a book of chord fingerings and that was it. Reme