2012 was great.

2012 was an incredible year of saying yes to adventure and opportunity. The role of gratitude in my life transformed everything and taught me to drink the joy and grace out of each moment, whether or not I understood the purpose at that time.

This year, I:

traveled all over Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay :: had my first full year out of school :: took a spring break anyway and went to Disney World ::  had countless sunset picnics by the lake in Davidson :: ate mexican food on Mondays with young life girls :: worked on a rappel tower at sunrise :: ran straight through a wide open field, singing & yelling at the top of my lungs :: hiked to the top of a 14,000 ft. mountain :: played outside in the rain :: watched the sunset from the top of a mountain :: roadtripped across the country :: got my first ever speeding ticket in wyoming :: hiked to a high altitude lake in Idaho :: slept in a hammock in bear country, accidentally :: blasted "wide open spaces" more than you can possibly imagine :: turned twenty-two :: moved into my first non-college apartment, having my own bathroom for the first time ever :: was blessed nonstop, all the time by conversations and adventures with Taylor :: had weekly playdates with my new friends Emily and April :: went ice skating in uptown Charlotte :: shot thirteen weddings :: daytripped to Asheville and Boone so I could be in the mountains :: took the leap into full time photography :: watched my best friend, Lauren, get engaged in Kansas City :: ran a half marathon :: rode bikes on the beach :: flew to California to visit Kenzie and Lauren :: got to spend Christmas at home in Nashville.

This is my dream job, and I'm confused and blown away by the fact that God took the shyest, most scared little girl and gave her a desire to meet, to know, to interact with new people all the time. This year, I did much.  But I became much less.  It has only been by the decreasing of my identity's roots in business and photography that God has wildly replaced me with Himself.  His passion, His ability, His beauty--and my privilege to follow the adventure.

graduation + summer craziness.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the backseat of my car somewhere between Saint Louis and Kansas City. I'm looking forward to a drive through the entire state of Kansas and half of Colorado tomorrow, and feeling nostalgic but very at peace about having left Davidson on Monday as a college graduate. There are so many things running through my mind. 

I love roadtrips, and good music, and thinking.

I hate saying see-you-soon when I don't know when I'll see you.

I have absolutely no idea what to expect for this summer, but I know it's going to absolutely wreck me and put a better version of me back together.

I am so, so, so grateful for my last four years at Davidson, and the community and friends that loved me fearlessly. 

I wish my best friends weren't going to be scattered all over the country next year. Change is weird.

I am nervous, excited, interested to see what out of college life in Charlotte will be like, every aspect of it.

I'm spending the entire summer in Colorado at Frontier Ranch as a ropes intern--- rappelling kids down a 120 ft. cliff, working on a high ropes course, and facilitating the giant swing. Fun, right? I'm looking forward to the fact that this makes the transition out of college a little more filled with community. I'm excited about the adventurousness of climbing a mountain at sunrise every morning, and I'm confident that I'll learn to depend on Jesus in ways I've never had to. 

Photography is taking a backseat for the summer (although I do promise to have a few more weddings to post, at least one amazing colorado family session- {meredith!}, and probably lots of Colorado instagrams), and I'm picking it back up full time when I get back to Charlotte in late August! Upcoming seniors, brides, families, I'm booking NOW for the fall and I will still be available by email this summer. 


 If you want to send me letters this summer, I'll love you forever. Mail them to: 
Haley George-intern 
Frontier Ranch 
PO Box 2025 
Buena Vista, CO 81211 

happy summer!

haley

beauty & one thousand gifts.

Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts is still challenging me. It has flipped my perspective upside down and challenged my daily definition of joy, compelling me to count the ugly as grace, transfiguring the ugly {conflict, boredom, mundane, annoyance} into beauty with thanks. Beauty is something I've always longed for, chased after. I've linked it to exotic mountain scenes in South America-- adventures summoning me. I've considered beauty something just out of reach, always.
But lately I've been learning that it's not. Beauty is everywhere. It's in me, its in the walks across campus that bring me joy, it's in the lakeside picnics with friends. It's in washing a sink full of dishes and sweeping the kitchen floor. It's in the hard conversations and the ones full of laughter. It's in the spring blossoms, the sunsets, the thunderstorms, the long car rides...

I slip the camera out of the pocket of my apron. How can this sensor, point-and-shoot in the palm of my hand, capture what the eye sees, the soul memorizes. I kneel low on wheat stalks at the edge and I frame up the moon, I want to see beauty.

Oh, I've felt that. I know the moments are real and passing and I can't capture it; I know I ought to just soak in the moment. The striving stops, and the worry falls away. Joy and beauty are there.

Beauty is the voice endlessly calling and so we see, so we reach. Beauty requires no justification, no explanation; it simply is and transcends. See beauty and we know it in the marrow, even if we have no words for it: Someone is behind it, in it. Beauty himself completes.

I'm learning that beauty is not in the striving, the seeking, the worrying, the fearing. Wherever you are, be all there, trusting with open hands.

what are you doing with your life?

All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given us.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Since I've been back in Davidson, I've gotten these questions time and time again:

What do you do all day now that you're graduated?

How's life after college?

Here comes a long-winded answer... I've got time, a lot of it, and it's such a blessing. Something really hard about the last two years was having a long list of things I wanted to learn and explore and understand, but not having enough time to do that in addition to going to class, doing my homework, and taking & editing pictures. Editing pictures was what I did in my "free time." Photoshoots are what I did to take a break from a homework-filled afternoon.
Now, it's the opposite; Photography is work and I adore the feeling of freedom that I feel like the Lord has given me with such intention after that time of waiting. I have freedom to shape my time & build my business, trusting and depending on God to provide shoots and contacts and wisdom. I'm reading One Thousand Gifts, and it is blowing my mind, teaching me to be more fully present where I am and more grateful for the little things. Seeing every single shoot and the time I had with clients as a gift completely transformed my heart last semester. The idea that "thanksgiving precedes the miracle" that keeps coming up in the book is not only attractive because of the miracle part, but also the way I've seen it shape my days, which from a different perspective might appear very mundane.
So, here I am, still partly in denial that I'm out of college, living life like this {this is where you should've started reading for the concise answer ;) ....
-I've set up work hours (this is the first step to having a job, right?). I'm learning what it means to have free time not filled with photography, and what it looks like to be so excited about the time I've set aside for work.
-Per Nancy Ray's photographers advice page, I'm learning to say, “I am a photographer.” Sounds easy, I suppose, but the idea of sharing with people that it's my dream is still a little intimidating for me. I guess there's no going back now :)
- Because of this post by Jamie Delaine, I'm spending my work hours not only editing and responding to emails, but being more proactive than I've ever been about learning business. I'm figuring out how sole-proprietorships, LLC's, taxes, and bank accounts work. Fun, right?
- I'm setting goals, and I'm praying though my goals. I'm figuring out ways to run my business that will allow me to {hopefully} serve in Africa and South America regularly, and to consistently give a percentage of what I make to a to-be-decided organization.

If you made it this far, thank you! Thanks for reading my blog, thanks for being supportive, thanks for asking me these questions and making me think hard about what I'm doing.

And since no post is any fun without pictures, here are four fun ones that I just got developed from a mustard yellow film camera that I've made my play toy.

I clearly don't yet have a system down for when to press the shutter and when to wind my camera. The majority of pictures were double exposures like this one (but less interesting).

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.

-Oswald Chambers

joy.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

-Henry Ward Beecher

i have no internet/email/phone access until August 7- read the explanation here.

rustic.

I documented my journey through a series of grainy film photos, a million scribbled words all over my notebook pages, dried flowers that looked up at me kindly before being picked; poignant songs that inspired, moved and compelled me to no end, and I even found ten beautiful seashells. It was wonderful.

-Paige, free people blog

i have no internet/email/phone access until August 7- read the explanation here.