This is War.

Day 31 - November 11, 2021

Today is a bridal shower for one of my brides and the theme is yellow. Everyone is wearing yellow which is going to be interesting because the way I edit doesn’t normally include a lot of yellow. I am on a roll with overcoming challenges lately! 

I was able to talk to Jake this morning for a long time and he sent me a gorgeous video of the sunset setting a fire in the sky. I am so proud of him for making goals in his life and then reaching them time and time again. He is absolutely amazing! I also woke up to a message from my girl Lorin. If you need a friend who is vulnerable, honest, compassionate, discerning, full of joy and kindness, then Lorin is your girl. This woman is powerful even though she doesn’t always feel like it. Today was that day but it gave me an opportunity to be there for her in the way that she is usually there for me. I’m so thankful to the Lord for the people he has given me.

THIS EVENT WAS MY FAVORITE

Okay, basically the bride gets ready and everyone including her is wearing yellow. I soon found out why this was a tradition. They had a time of prayer and singing inside the house. Then they went outside on the roof and began a short ceremony. It was raining so the other photographers and I were running around trying to protect our gear and still continue shooting. For the ceremony, the bride sits in a chair by herself on the stage. Once the singing and prayers are over the families come up and rub a turmeric and sandalwood mixed powder on her face and arms. Then her family gives them a sweet, a banana, and a leaf (it's odd for us, normal for them) as a thank you for coming and giving blessings. It is supposed to be a very calm situation. BUT what started as a ceremony of blessings soon turned into a turmeric war. I KID YOU NOT. These people were throwing hands. Faces, clothes, hands, and feet were all completely yellow. They were smearing turmeric aggressively on everything. One person tried to escape an attack and ran right into me. I fell over and hopped right back up because I was not trying to get turned into a yellow smurf. They got the videographer and the other photographer but I almost punched the person who came at me. Not on purpose, but I turned and they were already in my face. Apparently, in a fight or flight situation my response is to fight. This was an interesting thing to learn about myself. Thankfully, instead of throwing a punch I open palm jabbed so I just knocked them backward in suprise instead of hurting them. I say jab because it wasn't a shove. I only used one hand and there was a good bit of force behind it. I felt bad but also no one else tried to get me soooo...

At 2 PM I still hadn't eaten yet. I finally ate around 3 PM. I was so invested in the job I was doing that I neglected to drink water and became dehydrated. By the time I ate lunch I was not feeling so good. They told me the event was over so I went to the car to sit with Suri. He played a game while I tried to reset myself and chug water. Once I felt better, he and I talked about our pets, tattoos, Harry Potter, marvel, and religion. Suri believes that all religions share the same god. He even has a tattoo of the Hindu, Muslim, and Christian symbols. Technically he believes in only one god, but he believes that all religions worship the same one god. I thought that was interesting. After that we started watching Captain America: Civil War together because we still had some time to kill.

Once everyone else was ready to go they all loaded into the car and we headed back to the house. On the way back one of the guys in the car asked me about my photography business and I answered his questions for about an hour. I didn’t know I had that much to say about my business. 

To give you some insight into our conversation, we were talking about copyrights and what a client actually purchased when they hire a photographer. I broke it down like by saying that clients pay photographers for their time, experience, and a copy of their images. He was confused by that so I explained that I own the copyright for all of the images I capture, not the client. He said that didn’t make sense so I compared it to his world which is music. I said, “If you write lyrics, write music, record, and produce a song about a girl named Christina does that mean that she owns the song? The whole song is about her: the way she looks, the way she acts, her personality…everything. Can she go around and tell everyone that it is her song and she owns it? No. Because it’s not her work. It may be work about her or but it’s not her work or her product. Photography is the same way. I may be taking pictures of you but I own the images because it’s my work. So just like you would buy a copy of the musician’s song with your name in it, you also buy a copy of the images with your face in it.” This man’s eyes were so big. Another person in the car said, “wow that makes so much sense!” That then led us to discuss Taylor Swift’s song writing about other people which cracked me up. We also had a really solid discussion about religions in India. We talked about the mythology of Hinduism, the introduction of Christianity to India, and the comparison of Islam to both. 

In case you didn’t catch on, I had an absolutely AMAZING day! I was literally able to do all of my favorite things (except eat) and it was wonderful. So wonderful that I was exhausted and fell asleep around 9 PM. Haha!