Hire a Photographer? Genius!

We don't own a video camera.  I know, we're probably the only family on the planet (or at least in Utah) that doesn't own one but we don't and here's why.  Once upon a time my brother-in-law got a new video camera and asked us if we'd like to have his old one.  Mind you, this was a LONG time ago.  My twenty year old daughter was like six or seven and the video camera was a monster.  You had to sit it on your shoulder it was so big - and look in and eye piece and then view it on a little tiny black and white screen.  Remember the days?  The one and only time that we ever used it was to my daughter's one and only dance recital.  We're sitting in the gym, on the bleachers, and she's dancing her heart out, and Jeff is recording away and the whole performance lasts all of two minutes and when it's over Jeff looks at me and says, "Why would I want to watch Bek's performance through a little viewfinder in black and white when I can watch the real thing in full and living color?"  So we donated the video camera and that was that because I too don't want to watch life happen while behind a viewfinder. 

 

Last spring I had a burst of pure inspiration.  Mason would be coming home from his mission in July and I wanted a million photos and while I have a pretty decent camera it is not a high speed digital one so my action shots tend to have bits of blur in them and it's not like you can tell him to back up and come off the airplane again and I wanted to be IN the moment and not worrying about the perfect shot...(whew, breath girlfriend!)...so...I got this thought...inspiration...why not hire a photographer?  I'm tellin' ya - it was genius!  I wished that I had a friend that I could beg to come take photos and though I do have a cousin that takes amazing photos (J.Taylor Photography), she was already doing a wedding that day so I just grabbed the phone book then went to each photographer's website to view what their pictures look like and started making calls.  Calls?  Not really - one call, that's all.  First local photographer that I called (Shootz Photography) was thrilled with the idea and charged me the same price that she charges to do birth photography - $100.  With that I got the photographer, all the photos on a disk AND a slide show.  Totally worth it and all of us - the whole family - got to be IN the moment.  It was wonderful and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

 

So here's Mason's homecoming slideshow but not the one that the photographer did 'cause I couldn't get it to upload but they are all her photos.  Lucky that I have that awesome software that I told you about here...

 

  

 

(...any ideas why YouTube seems blurry? Maybe it's just my old age...)