Ray Davis Photography | Create Your Fairytale

25 May 2014

Create Your Fairytale – McGee House

Create Your Fairytale

We all need inspiration now and again. We need a chance to learn, grow and develop ourselves to discover who we are. We want to live our fairytale, chase after our dreams, and pursue our passions. But chasing a dream/chasing your fairytale ending can come with a lot of risk and fear. Fear that you won’t make it, that you’ll slip and fall while chasing after that passion, that dream. However, beyond that fear is your wonderful happily ever after. Sometimes you just need to continue running full speed, working with all your heart to create your own fairytale ending.

I was more than blessed to be able to attend an amazing workshop with equally amazing photographers that helped me to realize this. Lukas & Suzy Vandyke, as well as Kristen Booth Photography hosted a “Dreams & Fairytales” Workshop at the Vandyke’s new wedding venue here in Harrodsburg, Kentucky – the McGee House. The venue is absolutely stunning, from the beautiful fields to the rustic architecture of the main house. I highly recommend it for any of your upcoming events.

Our hosts ( Kristen, Lukas, & Suzy ) inspired all of us in attendance. Our group ranged from those with years of experience to those just starting out and testing the waters. The content was not only relative to all of us, but also eye-opening for myself. They taught us how to clarify our own goals, to find our niche or specialty, and how to work with other small business to achieve a mutual goal. The sentence I remember the most comes from Kristen Booth Photography:

“You need to ask yourself, at the peak of your (photography) career, what do you want to be (shooting) doing? What, where, who are you (shooting) doing?”

It hit me like a ton of bricks! Sure I wanted to be pursuing my passion in photography, but I never thought about a goal to strive for. I thought just turning a profit from my passion would be worthwhile enough – to actually do what I love as my career. But I realized, that if I never have a higher goal to strive for, I’ll never get anywhere at all. I feel like that is true for all of us. If we get comfortable just working at our “job” all the time, we’ll never try to grow, get promoted, become an entrepreneur, a business owner, or whatever it is if we get complacent with where we are at currently in our lives.

So the point is… create your own fairytale. Fulfill your dreams. Reach out and grasp it, for it is real. It’s your job to do something about it. Rarely does a fairytale-ending get handed to us. Snow White had to deal with 18 years of an evil step-mother, was almost killed by a huntsman, and cheated death 3 times before she reached her happily-ever-after. Now that may not be the best example, but you get my point. You may not be where you want to be in your story, but you have to start turning pages to reach that happily-ever-after. Don’t get stuck in a book half written.

As for myself, I’ve given this question of where/what I want to be doing a lot of thought, but nothing definite comes to mind still. I want to provide unique and amazing images for families and others to cherish and admire. I want to be able to teach others about my passion. But for me, it might not be as much as who,what I am shooting/photographing as much as who am I doing it with. I’d love to chill with Sue Bryce, Jamie Frayser, Lara Jade, Sandy Puc, Meg Bitton, Amanda Holloway, Stephanie Pana, Brandy Kay, and so many others. I made so many wonderful new friends that share my passion at the workshop and shooting together was an amazing experience in itself. We bounced poses and ideas off one another to create beautiful, stunning images together. I love the feeling of being able to share something I love with others that can relate and understand. Everyone of these ladies are amazing and are a complete joy to be around. I am so glad to be able to call them friends. Probably the biggest thing I gained from this workshop was these amazing new friends – of which I have some behind the scenes shots of below. I’ve also included links to their pages so that you can go visit them and show them some love as well!

Without further ado here are the images as a result of this workshop. Many thanks to Lukas and Suzy Vandyke for hosting the workshop. If you ever get the chance to meet them, you should! Suzy is a total sweetheart with a smile that could melt the crankiest person’s heart. Kristen Booth was equally amazing for taking time to fly all the way out here and give her time for this workshop. Her energy is catching and her vision to see beauty in everything is remarkable. I am so grateful to have met each of you and I pray we get to hang out again real soon!