Lest my Internet friends and fans think I have forgotten you for all the IRL shooting I have been doing, I have wanted to let you know I have not actually forgotten you. So I am doing a giveaway.

I am giving away this 8×12 linen-textured, matte print of one of my favorite photos (a $35 value) to someone who comments here before Friday night at 11:59 p.m. (EDT) (I should note that the watermark will NOT be on the print.)

On Saturday morning, I will do a random selection of the names left in my comments here, and I will send “two” (that’s the title on this print) to the person whose name comes up.

To enter, you may do any of the following (and leave a comment for each – you’ll get an entry for each comment you leave):

• Leave a comment telling me why you like my photography OR what you would do with the print.

• Like Kelly Sauer Photography on Facebook.

• Follow me (@arestlessheart) on Twitter.

• Tweet about this giveaway.

• Post this giveaway on Facebook

Now why would I be doing a photography push online, when my clients must necessarily be IRL (in real life) clients?

It’s @lisaleonard’s fault.

Yesterday, Lisa retweeted my photography reveal from Saturday’s shoot, and I got an IRL wedding query because somebody who followed her saw her tweet, saw my post, and thought of a local friend who is getting married in March who would really love my photography style. So she messaged her friend, who checked out my work, loved it, and contacted me about my free sessions AND the possibility of booking me to photograph her Isle of Palms wedding.

I was absolutely stunned and amazed, and I realized that all you out there who have been cheering me on really can be a part of all of this too, and I WANT to include you! I wouldn’t be doing this at all if you all hadn’t encouraged me so much over these last several months.

So here’s what I’m thinkin’: If I book a paying IRL shoot based on a referral (however roundabout) from any of my online friends, your friend will receive 30% off their session with me, and you will receive a free 8×8, 8×10, or 8×12 print in the mail of the photo of your choice.

Sound good? Now get going – you have a print to win. I have to go tell Lisa she’s getting a free one already.

I am journaling again. I don’t know what it is about me that I can’t keep my words inside, that I can’t make sense out of life and just hold things in my heart. I have to come out somewhere, say what I’m thinking to someone, think out loud, dialogue my brain things.

I’ve gotten a number of comments this week that I sound different than I usually do here. I have smiled at that, recognizing that the me I most often share here is not the crazy me, the fun me, the me that gets down in the dirt, the me that can return a good pun when necessary. I wanted this place to be able to hold my poetry, my in-depth prose, my introspections. I am finding a drawback to linking the photography to my regular blog.

It’s keeping me accountable, though, to be myself wherever I am, whether I’m posting client photos or writing poems that come from deep.

I talked to God last night. I forgot how much easier this is to do in writing. I feel alternately less spiritual/more spiritual when I do this. Why can’t I just talk to Him like a normal person? Which raises an interesting point about why can’t I talk to people like a normal person? I don’t trust my voice, yet I have kissed my agoraphobia goodbye lately, and now I run the risk of being grossly misunderstood if the wrong thing comes out of my mouth. You know, like every other person in the world.

I realize how often I hide behind written words and pictures to express myself – I have always been this way. I think as if I was written in a book. It’s what comes of reading so much so young, I think. I learned much about stories and observation; I learned less about engaging with life. I was ostracized a lot as a kid, actually. I probably deserved it. I was a prig. Pete and I have often said we’d have hated each other if we’d met when we were younger.

I discovered this weekend that I still am a prig. That I walk around judging people without realizing it. Someone shared something with me about something (oh geez, THAT was just cryptic), and I took a step back and went “whoa – they can’t do that! they don’t know God like I do…” My mental voice trailed off.

God and I talked about this last night. Or rather, I talked to God about it. I’m kind of in shock, realizing that even my mental decisions not to judge someone begin with judgment. HOW did Jesus walk around knowing hearts and seeing people and love them where they were? I’m entering a phase of my life where the people I’m meeting are not the “safe” people I choose to have around me, the people who believe what I believe and know God the way I do. I’m not going to love them as He does if I dismiss them for that from the get-go.

I find myself more desperate for grace, because the more I think about it, the deeper I find it goes in me, this pride that sets me thinking “I am better than you.” It’s an icky feeling – which I believe is a good thing, to be honest, because I know it is His Spirit in me, identifying the thing that is not of God.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about humility, and realizing that I am not a humble person, that my walk with God is not a humble walk, except by virtue of the fact that I am human and He is God. I can’t stop there, though. I’m like Jacob, wrassling Him until He blesses me – or throws my leg out.

With Pete gone so much lately for work and tired, I’m finding myself lonely. I feel as though I should talk to God about stuff, bounce things off Him, but does He care about “my brand”? Or if I’m trying to figure out what looks good on a design project, will He talk back to me about this color or that layout? What would He do with my vents about my kids or my clients (when I have them – my clients are pretty awesome, just so you know!) or my family or my own dumb issues?

The idea of God being my best friend – I like it very much. But sometimes, it seems as though He won’t be my friend if I don’t talk about what He wants to talk about, as if He has an agenda for me to fulfill and if I don’t, then He’s not interested in meeting me on my level.

And yes, I realize I’m talking about God who is Spirit, and Jesus came in the flesh, and I walk by faith and not by sight, but it’s hard to want to hang out with someone and be consumed with someone you don’t quite believe gives two whits for you – over the small, stupid things at least. He’s more interested in say, saving your life.

My perspective is small.

I went to the sea on Saturday for the shoot I revealed yesterday. We had some trouble connecting, and I found myself on the beach alone at one point, with the wind and the waves pounding my senses as they pounded the shore. For just a moment, I stopped, closed my eyes and turned my face up into it.

He was there.

Which was a good thing, because my own plans for the evening – the ones about presenting a put-together, professional front – went AWOL in the next few minutes. That was also a good thing.

Intentionally choosing reality as I want to do with my photography is uncomfortable. I value the real in others, but I’m too good at wearing my own facades. Sometimes I need to let the wind and the water and the God I don’t know why I don’t trust knock me over so I can breathe and look up. You know, so I can see I’m more toward the bottom than I think I am, that there are others, and Other who are better than myself.

God, I’m way human. Wow.

This ramble has been brought to you today by the early-rising baby system we have in place, five photography shoots in two weeks (or more? I’ve lost count), a bit of a cold, two recent journal entries, and an unplanned shot of the sky. Thanks for listening.

Giveaway coming tomorrow. I actually mean it this time. I’m SO excited!

It was Arianne who got me thinking about it. I’d been dealing with some bad back pain, and she knew it. She emailed me, telling me I should check out her chiropractor, telling me she thought he could help me. I went online to check out the program she was talking about. I somehow managed to miss her doctor (who is actually about 45 minutes away), but found one just ten minutes from me, around the corner of my husband’s office.

Now Piper and Bredon and I visit Elite Family Chiropractic three times a week. I receive corrective spinal adjustment, Piper visits “friends,” and Bredon spreads his cute around.

Dr. Brad moved to Charleston with his wife Lauren and their dog-toddler Daisy about a year ago to start a Maximized Living practice that has really impressed me with its warm community atmosphere and wealth of good health information. After years of dealing with the medical profession, I am very leery of doctors and their professed “knowledge” of my body (that vent is a post for another day – sorry! :-P), but I have enjoyed getting to know Brad and Lauren a bit. They’re a gorgeous fun couple, so when I decided to offer my free sessions, I told Lauren she and Dr. Brad could have one of them, if they wanted.

Saturday night, they took me up on the offer, and we had some crazy on the beach under a rip current warning, with the wind taking the hurricane-driven surf and hurling it against the shore. We had a little trouble connecting, since I’d forgotten to give them my cell phone number (I am so practicing on my poor free session people!), so we lost a bit of the light I’d hoped to have.

I love to take risks behind the camera. Love. it. Low light, however, is not my favorite risk. So I way overshot, and it paid off. Their shoot tells stories I couldn’t have planned in the best light. I love the feel of it, the alive that comes through in the blur and the wind. Take a look at this special couple (and their little dog too):

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I had wondered on seeing the wild water in the harbor on Saturday morning how their shoot would go – I’m thinkin’ it worked for us after all. Thanks, Brad and Lauren, for helping me out! I hope you enjoyed our shoot as much as I did! I loved seeing you take the maximized life you give to your patients and live it yourselves!

As I noted above, Brad and Lauren received a free couple’s session: one hour of shooting time, a web album, and a DVD containing 50-100 retouched images, a $350 value. I still have some free sessions available as I’m building my portfolio, and I am offering regular sessions at a very discounted rate. Check it out, and contact me if you’re interested in a shoot!

And I’ll just put my plug in here – I’m dying to pick up a beach wedding, which would include a free couple’s shoot like this – morning-after or engagement…

The theme at I Heart Faces this week is “Photojournalism.” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about “photojournalism” when it comes to my work. Up until just a few months ago, I was aiming at joining the Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA), so over the last few years, I geared most of my work toward this goal. I tell stories with my photos now, and even though I’m moving slightly away from wedding photojournalism now. This shot is one of my all-time favorite photos. It encompasses my style as few of my other photos do; the life and the motion and the real and the passion here tell the whole story in one captured second. I could not resist linking it up this week, and I’m looking forward to seeing the other entries! This one is going to be good!

Link up by Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. (central time) to share your own!

(Sorry about the two-post day; one of the drawbacks to having only one blog for writing and photography! Check out my earlier post – a photographic manifesto. Look out world! WHEW, and now it’s back to work!)

I see things a little different. I see the halo around the sun when I should be seeing a puddle in a parking lot. I see the smile in the eyes if the mouth is smiling or not. I see the memory in the snow, not the individual flakes. I see unique personality instead of boilerplate posturing.

I love the way I see the world, and I love sharing it in photography. But even if I wasn’t sharing it, I would be capturing it. Because sometimes I just can’t not take a picture.

This last week, I caught bits and pieces of Jasmine Star’s Creative Live wedding workshop. There were things she shared that made me go, “yes, yes, I’m totally on the right track” – I haven’t wasted five years of serious photography-dabbling. And there were things she said that made me stop and think, “wow, that is so totally not me – I don’t want to be her.”

But there were three things she said that have stuck with me all weekend, because she put words to something I’ve been coming to myself recently:

• She said something (I will never remember the specifics – sigh) about committing to photography
• She said that “brides are not choosing pictures; they’re choosing a photographer.”
• She encouraged her listeners/watchers to choose three words to describe their brand – the “brand” being the “this is what you get if you have me shoot for you.”

The Commitment:

I’ve been on the fence for years about my photography, first because I was working a full-time job, then because I was home with a baby, then two babies. I’ve sat that fence because I was hired for “cheap photography” and not for what I would bring to it. I sat that fence because life interfered with processing and I was collapsing and dealing with post-partum depression. I sat the fence because “I’m not that good” and because I couldn’t figure out how to “balance” photography and family.

But in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been scheduling and shooting all over the place without so much time to think in between, I’ve realized that photography brings me to life. I feel different behind a camera. I’m not just observing my world. I’m entering in, and I LOVE it. I mean, LOVE it love it.

And in between shoots? I’m giddy. I’m entering into my kids’ lives and my husband’s life. Instead of trying to figure out what part of me goes where and how to prioritize my loves, I am embracing it all at once, until I feel like I’ll explode, in the best way possible. I’m fully there, in a way I didn’t think was possible if I ever opened myself to it. Hello, there IS no balance.

But God isn’t writing on the wall for me to pursue photography. He’s not telling me that it’s a mission field or that I shouldn’t or should do it. He’s giving me a choice. Driving back from my Saturday shoot (reveal coming tomorrow), I kept asking Him if He’d just say one way or the other what I should do. I didn’t get it. I got, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” I got, “If you believe about Me what you say you believe about Me, then walk out with Me.” Life abundant.

At this point in my life, I think I can commit to photography. I think that if I do, I won’t feel so constantly torn. But if I do, I have to walk into it real, walk into it as me.

The Me who Takes Pictures

Bringing me to my photography is the most important aspect of it for me. As I said, I see things a little different. And I need my clients to either see what I see or want what I see. I’ve sold myself short for opportunities to shoot, and I’ve let others dictate my work to me. I’ve separated my life from my photography, trying to be “a real photographer” with professionalism and everything – but I am inescapably me. (Sorry, folks.)

Me is still learning. Me does not have the best equipment out there – but it’s not the equipment that takes the pictures, it’s the photographer.

I am daring to bring me to this, daring to bring God to this. I am daring to shoot what I see even if it means I don’t fit into market-driven pigeon-holes. I’m having a blast planning a couple of site changes to bring me a bit more to my photography, to share a bit more of who I am and what I do – and what I want to do.

If you don’t like me and what you see here, don’t hire me. If you have questions about me, ask them. I am more than willing to answer. :-)

The Brand

It has taken me the longest time to come up with this. I didn’t know what I was doing at the beginning, or how I would change. But there are three things that are a consistent part of my photography – from the first wedding I shot to the work I’m doing today:

• Passion
• Reveal
• Alive

I have a Story People quote up on my Facebook page (have you liked that yet, btw?) that encapsulates the experience I want to give people when I do a session:

I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain
and the words that dance between people, and for me,
it will always be this way,
walking in the light,
remembering
being alive together

- story people

And for my website, I want to change it so that when you visit, you walk away feeling, “I could be that alive.” I’ve been working on this for years, but it’s finally beginning to come into focus.

I’ve got something different to bring to this, an artist’s eye and a heart that is His. I see a little different because He sees a little different in me, and my photographic “voice” is His reveal – “See what I see here,” He says. I make memories in my photography sessions. I’m not a mirror – I am a scribe. You would not believe the beautiful different I see. I don’t believe it half the time. Every shoot is a discovery.

I think it’s time. It’s sooner than I thought it would be, but hello, wow. Let’s do this thing!

This week, there were a lot of things I meant to do:

• I meant to do a giveaway. (I’ll be doing that next week – I’m gearing up to launch my shop, and I want to gauge online interest and let you all know that I’m not just shooting for locals.)

• I meant to write a poem for L.L.’s HCB Poetry prompt.

• I meant to catch up with my Reader, because I miss Laura and Erin and Jessica and Deb and Jo and Ann and Michelle and a whole slew of other friends.

• I meant to write a post for Emily’s Tuesdays Unwrapped and a post for Bridget’s Blog Carnival.

• I meant to have a maternity shoot, but it got cancelled for the best reason – the mama went into labor! (Newborn shoot coming soon, I think.)

• I meant to reply to my Flickr comments.

• I meant to tweak the fonts on my website.

• I meant to put together a “school schedule” for Pip, who is interacting at a five-year-old level lately and wants to “go to school.”

• I meant to make a meal list.

• I meant to write another installment in my God in the Yard study series.

But I didn’t actually do any of that. Because I’m not superwoman, and because…

• I scheduled five or six shoots this week.

• I completely reworked an article for Ungrind.

• I nearly finished a book.

• I updated the code and the slideshow for my photography page.

• I created a new design for a friend. (Can’t wait for the reveal on this – I’m STOKED.)

• I went out for dinner with my family last night.

• I shot, processed, and posted three photo shoots in two days.

• I spent a couple hours watching Jasmine Star on Creative Live. You are SO going to get more of my thoughts on this later (but that goes in next week’s “meant to do” list. :-P)

• I spent an hour on the phone with my web-designer brother about outsourcing and computer equipment and a new computer.

• I spent real time with my kids and I said “I love you” a lot.

• I had a couple LONG, wonderful conversations with my husband.

• I actually wrote in my journal (it’s been a year since I did that).

• I managed on two days this week to get up by 5:30 and have a little me-time before things started.

• I had three chiropractor visits and two x-rays.

I’m in such a crazy transition time right now. I don’t know if I’m up or down or tired or crazy – well, crazy I’m pretty sure about – or backward or forward, but there are good, good things happening. I can feel myself moving into my life, moving slow and faster than I’ve moved in years, and I feel like I can do this thing, feel like I’m on the right track and if I continue down this road it’s not going to be about success or failure, but about about the way I share and experience and worship God.

I’ve not been able to see it before now, and I’m so impatient, I want to reveal it all at once, but He’s not ready yet for His own reveal, but I’m not on the fence anymore, and that is a good thing.

So there will be more coming soon, and probably poetry and photos and all kinds of fun (I have a shoot on Saturday with my chiropractor and his wife – and their little dog Daisy – SO excited!) but the kids are sick today, and I have to grocery shop and clean house, because my parents are coming in from Virginia for a brief visit tonight, and isn’t life wonderful when you let yourself live it, even if you don’t know what the heck you’re doing?

And you have to know the story behind the photo in this post.

Last Friday morning, we were on our way into town for a photography session. Pete was in the other car (did I tell you, we were GIVEN a car this month?) and I had the two kiddos in my car. We were driving over the bridge and the sun came pouring through the morning clouds, spraying color and light everywhere. I couldn’t do anything but look, and called back to Pip, “Piper, look out the window! Look at how beautiful!”

She gasped (my three-year-old gasps at beautiful!) and gushed, “It’s beootiful, Mama! You have to take a pitchure!”

Of course I was driving, so I couldn’t, but when we arrived at our destination, I saw the sun was still playing out over the water, so I snapped a couple of photos while we waited for my clients to arrive.

When I showed her later (this was the best part to me), she got all excited. “Mama, you did take a pitchure! Thank you SHSOO much!”

All over the sun in the clouds.

This kid and I – I think we’re gonna have some fun together.

music doesn’t spin – it organizes things that don’t have words, takes the obvious and changes the ordinary. But you spin to music; it’s how you dance, and sometimes the spin is like flying, hair flying out, hands flung free, pigtails swinging. then the laughter, and you are not always dizzy, because you center on that one note, the one solid point around which everything else revolves.

i talked too much today.

I have spent the last several days working non-stop, processing photos, booking sessions, revising a real article. My adrenals are tired, which means that they are hyperactive, which means that I’m not feeling so good on a physical level. So much is happening in me that my body just can’t hold it all, I think, which is why I feel slightly crazy. It’s a fun crazy, but I’m really tired.

My article was about identity, so I’ve been turning it over and over, thinking about finding my identity in God, thinking about establishing my identity as a photographer. I’m starting to see that the one doesn’t exist in my life to the preclusion of the other, starting to roll my eyes at myself for my own standoffishness when it comes to trusting God and acknowledging Him in all my ways.

I cannot segment my life or I’ll lose my mind, but you would not believe what happens in me when I am shooting. I didn’t realize it until my shoots last week, when I heard my mouth going as I pulled the camera and moved and posed and saw and adjusted and lived behind my lens for a few hours. I don’t know what words came outside, to be honest, but what I shared above is an example of what was going on inside.

I think it was my muse, surfacing. It thinks I should be a pretty intense character. I try to keep it in check, but sometimes…

I’m rather spilling my random here today; I hope you don’t mind. It has to go somewhere, and seriously, I type faster than I write. And you don’t want me to call you, because I’d talk your ear off, and you still wouldn’t get what is going on inside the way the words come out here, because I’m terrifically awkward in person and I talk about all kinds of things that don’t need to be talked about just to keep the conversation going.

I’m beyond restless lately. I’m almost craving it, because it is a familiar spot for me. I feel more driven – excited-driven, like I have a direction to go for the first time in a long time.

Once I get a little of this fog cleared, I hope to write a bit more coherently about where I’m going with things.

If you managed your way through this very ADD post, congratulations. You’ll get to read this part (the fun part):

I have a giveaway coming soon. Probably tomorrow.

Make a note of it.