Minou Photography

 I am so glad to announce that my Camera is back.

I’m so exited!

 I’m a big believer that everything happens for a reason. So the Economy is bad right now…ouch, what a shock! Sure we might not end up by the side of the road with horses holding our goods (or are we?..lol) but we are not in good standing. By now we all know that. Some of us though…just don’t get it still.

 The Great Depression…1920’s…Sound familiar?

This picture from that time frame I’ve had in my Document’s File for a few years now, because it makes me cry every time I see it. Both my girls have short hair, and just seeing the back of those girls hair, just takes me there for some reason.  I see my 6 year old there to the right, and my 4 year old to the left, and my 7 month old in her arms.

She was 32, as I am today, and her kids are about the same age as mine are right now. Her kids had to kill birds for dinner, they had to sell their car tires, they had to sleep in a tiny hut barely covered.

 We complain for every single thing that goes wrong in our lives. How sad are we. Just try and put yourself in her shoes.

You can’t.

People got overly confident in that time and started investing and investing money…

Not thinking clearly….

Impulsive.

Banks collapsed…scary isn’t it?

Every event in life has a meaning, and it’s only meaningful to those who are paying attention. Those that finally pay attention learn the lesson and move on. One thing that I’m doing differently today. I’m living within my means. Just meeting our basic needs…that is all I need…and I’m paying off my debt. Yes my friends I have some, and they are slowly going away.

Let me tell you, It feels absolutely great to know that I’m not lying to myself anymore nor to my spouse nor to my children, because when you don’t respect money…

You don’t respect yourself, your spouse nor your children.

We ALL make mistakes. Now and days with the T.V, the Internet, friends…all this pressure to be on top of it all, to have it all. The American Dream, it really is just that…a dream. You don’t need what they have, you don’t need a bigger house or a bigger car or expensive shoes or extravagant vacations or the latest cell phone. Temptation is really the factor here.

So I’ve removed myself from those things…the healthy & fun way, not the drastic & sad way.

  My girls are learning all these things. Specially my 1st grader. There’s kids her age holding cell phones as they walk home from school….alone. It’s sad how detached we are from our children sometimes. The other day I see this young girl going into her class room just a few class rooms from my oldest….this young girl was 10 I’m sure. She had these knee high boots…shiny and oh so white, and she had a short white dress on. Now, WA is very cold right now…specially in the mornings, what is going on with these parents? Get in tune please!

Wake up and smell it! Just say “NO” to your kids. YOU are the parent. You lay down the law.

The important thing is to move forward in TRUTH.

 I grew up in the country, in Puerto Rico. We never owned a new car, not even a used nice car. You know what car my dad had for YEARS…..A monster….a red monster…with a loud scary horn.

A red MONTECARLO. I hated that car…Specially when he would show up at my school with it….lol.

I wanted to hide under the dirt. My guy friends LOOOOOVED IT. Wow cool tires William! AWSOME!. Sure…Ummmhmmm…Coooooool. Well I learned to drive with that car, I learned to drive WAY before my older sister did. On most weekends I was out with no shoes on, running around my neighborhood, or in my moms kitchen, curious as always. I learned to cook way before my older sister too. I was into everything.

 This here is my hometown Beach called Playa Azul (Blue Beach) in Luquillo Mar (Eastern Side of P.R) Puerto Rico. I spent half of my youth here. It takes just 10 minutes to walk to it from the house were I grew up in were my mom still lives. Last year I was alone in PuertoRico for 7 months, I left the island this past December. I went to this beach almost every day with my girls last year while pregnant with my third. I prayed laying down on that sand…

 God was there sitting right next to me.

 I was living in a house up the country, where I had horses creeping up in the middle of the night in my yard, and I was calling my husband who was still in Hawaii saying..”There’s someone breaking into the house”! I had a thief with 4 legs jumping into my trash outside and leaving huge messes for me to clean up in the mornings…making me whisper in between my teeth while I picked up the mess…”Ugh man…I can’t…what…look at this….is this what I think it is…yuck!”.

I’m telling you, last year was a big wake up call for me. And I grew stronger because of it. Sometimes you have to get hit hard to get it.

Some of us…still don’t get it.

If you’re being a bad neighbor….then try to relax, you’d be surprised, some people are great. Ok, yes some people are coo coo for coco puffs…beware of those….There are honestly some people out there to get you, and you have to pay attention. And yes, some people are just there to bring some very unnecessary drama in your life. And sometimes you know it….but you don’t follow those instincts…just to keep a friend. Trust me…you don’t need friends like those.

 I had a weird e-mail sent to me a couple of weeks ago. It said, and I quote….”Your Photography site and your Blog suck”  Now I know who could have possibly done this…I have several people in mind. I started my photography in 2006, and I had never received anything like this…ever. Some people on this earth are really here to test you.

Now…somehow they think that’s going to bring me down, but let me tell you, after everything that I went through last year….There is no way my friends.

So let me tell these people this…

I know life seems boring for you at times, and you chuckle with pure evil and delight while you’re typing away tasks like these…of course no one can see you….easy right? For some reason you were angry when you sent that e-mail to me. Not only that, you made up an e-mail to send it to me in.

 What happy person would send that to someone…correct?

It only makes me work harder! 

That’s not going to make me give up….you’re waisting your precious time and energy on something that is not affecting me in any negative way.

 I hope that God doesn’t return that mean act back towards your life, your finances, or your family. Obviously you have issues that you need to work on. Someone like you….does this more than once.

Think about that. 

Ok….enough of that! Sometimes you have to speak out. It’s healthy…trust me.

 2 GREAT news!!!!

 1st one is that I have a session coming up on Thursday! My 1st Senior Photo Session! I am so exited. God has blessed me so much this year. Thelma has been waiting for weeks & weeks for me, because of the camera being repaired. I even sent her to another photographer here in WA, and she said…

“No, I really like this “Mom’s In Need Of Us”

And that is MINOU!

2nd news? My husband is coming home from Kuwait for R&R…in just 1 week….or 2! He’s waiting to hear how soon he can get to us. It’s been 5 months of this Single Parenting life of 3 kiddos under 6 1/2 years of age….and him in 102 degree heat…in a tent…ugh…we both need a break, and we need him so.

Sooooooo,

 Do NOT give up!

Anything is possible if you do it in faith and in truth.

I’m Smiling at someone today for no reason…I’m hugging someone today… or I’m helping someone today.

Do it! Forget all your troubles for just a few minutes, it’s worth it!

God Bless you Chicas & Chicos!

We can’t wait to see you Dad.

Hello!

A lot of women are going into the photography field. As a matter of fact 3 of my clients from Hawaii have actually dabbed into the Photography arena.  This here, is a few tips to remember.

In daily life we rarely feel compelled to stop and judge the size of an object unless it is far away, unfamiliar, or seen from a puzzling perspective. But in a photographic composition, which presents a flat version of reality, one of the first things we look for is a guideline that helps us establish the size and proportion of the objects in a scene.

This subject from “The Joy of Photography” one of my most recent study books sent to me by my online photography school, brought some curiosity to me. As I shuffled through all of my photos that I had taken in Hawaii I came across an amazing one. One of the photos in this book that explains this subject even more is by Ansel Adams http://www.anseladams.com/ Called an “unusual photograph” of two silhouetts of climbers on a masive rocky pinnacle.

It goes on to explain that we recognize tiny figures because their scale is familiar to us. Any object of known size can have this effect, but human figures are particularly compelling when juxtaposed with massive natural or man-made shapes because we identify with their vulnerability.

Here is my picture taken on Hickam’s Air Force Base beach, in Oahu Hawaii. I took 7 of these in different dirrections. This one was neither under or over exposed. Didn’t need to be touched one bit. You can see the shapes, the space, and the size. The figure of a man fishing restores the massive proportion of the sun at sunset.

Never be limited, photographically, to only taking everyday snapshots, but try stepping into being able to recognize the various facets that make a potential photograph and start taking the kind of meaningful, exiting photographs that makes us marvel, smile, or fight back tears.

Next I’ll be reading about finding the rhythm in patterns & recognizing the texture of form.

I’ll be back..:-).

-Lucy

Thinking of you today.

I loved this session so much that I just had to post some more pictures of Summer!

Who said that you can’t look absolutely breathtaking while giving your baby the bottle!

An American Soldier a Mother & a Wife.

I can’t stop editing!

In our thoughs always