Summerfest 2010

One conversation that has been going on in our house a lot lately is "if I had only known back then what I know now..." What I wouldn't give to have a time machine and go back and talk to the 18-year old me.

I can remember the first occupation I said I wanted when I was a child was to be an author of children's books. Not the toddler kind, but not really the young adult kind, either. The in-between ones. I was infatuated with The Babysitters Club. In fact, I still have all my books from when I was a kid, somewhere in a box in the garage. But as I grew older, I realized I can't really write. So that dream faded.

I don't really remember having any career ambitions in high school. I remember for a short time I wanted to be a marine biologist, but that was only because a boy I had a crush on wanted to be a marine biologist. I graduated and went to college hoping that I would eventually decide. But I never did. I really thought I would go into accounting for awhile. I like it ok, and I've done it for several jobs, but it wasn't exciting or something I was passionate about. I took a photography class in college, but I felt so out of my league. It was fun, but I felt like I just wasn't creative enough.

But then in my 30s, I rediscovered my love of photography. And it hit me hard. Like - this-is-all-I-ever-want-to-try-to-do-for-a-living-ever-again hard. And I'm trying to make a living out of it. I've always been one that lacks patience of any kind, but I am really trying to be patient in building a business. And I love taking people's photos. It makes me excited. It doesn't feel like work at all to me. I'm normally a quite shy person, but for some reason, when I'm taking someone's photo, all that shyness is gone. I hope that one day I have a successful, established portrait business.

But do you want to know my true, secret ambition is? I would love to be a travel photographer. I watch these shows on the Travel Channel, and the whole time, I am thinking of how I would turn this into a photo or how good that would look in print. I would love to travel the world and tell it's stories and history through photographs.

So why this big schpeal with these fair pictures? Well, I love taking pictures. Even if they aren't of me, or even of people I know. Call it practice (because I need it - I really know nothing about travel or journalistic-type photography!) My little obsession. My little way of making my dreams come true - even if it is just down the street and no one is paying me to do it. I love pictures that tell a story. That's why.

This last weekend was Summerfest in Orem. The weather was horrible - rainy and windy pretty much the whole time. We planned on going down on Saturday night, but it had been raining, and I didn't want to take Abbi out in the rain. So we decided not to go, and to just go to Strawberry Days this week. And Josh got a really bad headache, so it was all for the best anyway. But then as I was making dinner, the clouds parted and the sun came out. I couldn't resist. I packed Abbi up and we went over. I wanted to get some pictures of fair food for my Zupas blog post. We walked around for a bit, and I was happy to be able to take some pictures. We stuck around for a bit until the rain started threatening again. Even though it's not a huge fair, there were still tons of people there. Hopefully next year the weather will be better and we can enjoy the whole thing!

Also, just as a side note - I'm not usually into heavily post-processed photos. I usually like to stick with real, clean colors. But I thought I'd have fun with these. Not my usual style, but something a little different!