Why I love what I do

I have been thinking about writing this post for a while now and I´m not sure about how personal or not personal I should get.
But I always love to read stories of people telling why they love what they do so I´ll just give it a try.

I have never dreamed of becoming a photographer. Not even a little bit. Not even with a tiny little thought in my head.
My husband loved photography long before we met and so me getting in touch with photography was predetermined.
I have told the story about how I came to be a photographer and how I fell in love with photography HERE.

But here´s why I fell in love with what I do.

When I was 16 years old I knew this boy. He was my boyfriend and we had this great innocent teenage relationship, holding hands all day and giggling on end.
One day he went home earlier than I had expected with some weird excuse.
I didn´t read much into it back then but the next day when I called him he was still in a weird place.
And I just didn´t get it.
Another day later my parents tried to tell me as gently as they could  that he had committed suicide the day before.
For me that seemed like the end of the world. I thought we were meant to be. I couldn´t imagine being without him for just one day. I fell into a deep hole of depression and doubts about myself and God.

As dramatic as that day was in my life and the hard time that came after that, looking back I can now say that it resulted in some of my best decisions.
God carried me through this and gave me amazing friends and a family that was there for me when I thought I´d die.
He protected me from being hurt any further and opened my heart at the right time to be ready to meet Danny, the love of my life, who is now my husband.

Now what does this have to do with my love for photography? It is actually quite simple. I have not only seen dark, depressing and hopeless but I´ve been there.

With my photography I wanna catch the opposite: the light (and not in a technical sense although that helps), hope, the love, joy and laughter of people, the hope in humanity and the love of God who looks at his tenderly formed creation with a smile.
I love capturing couples that can´t keep their eyes off of each other, children that are running around, making nonsense and enjoying themselves. Those moments of joy when a mother looks at her newborn baby and you can almost hear her heart beating faster.

That is why I fell in love with photography, BIG time.

Picture taken by Danny Cloete