See Kali Jump

Life is Crazy. But Beautiful:)

2009-11-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, its been so long since I have written on here!! A testament to my schedule. This semester has been my hardest one yet, and not because of the workload necessarily, but motivation is lower than low. Im just plum burnt out! But by now, everyone knows that I am going to Africa!!! I am so excited, I always wanted to travel around and play Mother Theresa, and now I will finally get a taste. Its so overwhelming, but i know it will be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

So that has been a huge time taker-upper, preparing to leave the country for a long time, and MT even longer. I will definitely be coming back here, but not till May, and that just seems like a lifetime away.

But the greatest reason I have been busy is........FRIENDS!!! I finally told myself to get up and stop whining about not having very many friends here, and to rekindle contacts here, and in Atlanta. And its amazing what happens when you reach out to people. I used to think that with all my school work and work-work, I would not have a spare second for lots of friends, that I would lose focus, but now I realize that it makes everything else so much more bearable!! I now have more friends than I can keep up with, much less hang out with here, and its such a great comforting feeling, I finally feel like Montana is a HOME. And I will be spending Thanksgiving in a snowy cabin, surrounded by all my new lovely friends, all us stragglers here in Montana.

Its amazing what happens when you just open up your heart<3

Quarter Life Crisis

2009-09-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

I am officially having one.
I can't explain why, but things have not been the same since I got back from Atlanta. I have been trying to blame it on jetlag, but I am now admitting that you cannot be jetlagged for a week from a two hour time difference. I think I am realizing now that I am just sad.
I obviously have reason to be, I'm getting a divorce! But its not just that. Its that I'm 2000 miles away from my family, friends, sisters, birthday parties, cousins being born, nights out on the town,and 100 percent burnt out from school and work and business AND getting a divorce.
Its not easy. And its a kind of not easy that phone calls don't fix.
When I was in Atlanta last week, I had more fun than I have had in a loooooong time. Granted I didn't have to work the whole time I was there, so that helped, but it wasn't just that. I got to see my sisters and just laugh and watch tv with them. I got to go out to eat and to the park with my mom. I got to visit my 91 year old great grandma, who still always makes me feel important. I got to see old friends, and make new ones. It was just wonderful.
So maybe its just being exhausted from a summer so chock full of work that I don't even know where it went... or maybe its that I'm truly wishing to be back in Atlanta. I really can't tell. I do know that since I got back, all I can think about is being there. I can't sleep, I haven't eaten hardly anything, and eveyone around me seems more and more like strangers.
I love Montana so much, but I am now thinking that maybe it was a brief love affair, holding only part of my heart, instead of the whole thing.
There are so many logistical reasons for me to stay, but so many emotional ones for me to leave. Is this where I AM supposed to be, or where I WAS supposed to be? How do you choose between the adventure of a lifetime, and the pure comforts of home? Or can you have both?
I leave for Jackson Hole and the Grand Teton National Forest in just a couple hours to shoot a wedding, and I know it will be one of the most beutiful places I have ever seen. But somehow it still won't compare to dirty, humid old Atlanta:)

back in the desk again

2009-09-01T16:37:00.000-07:00

Well, fall has fell, and its back to school time. I swore I was going to take it easy this semester, but that little insane worker bee in my brain woke back up, so now I'm taking 17 credits. But I did give myself the option of dropping any class that looked like it was going to be hard after the first day, and everything looks okay so far.
So here are my classes this semester:
Molecular/cellular function
Behavioral neuroscience
Memory and cognition
Research design and analysis
Psycholinguistics

Whew! That's lots of long words. I can't wait for the snow to start, I'm seeing many long days and nights of studying ahead of me. Pray for me and my GPA!

Some pretty pictures

2009-08-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

gorgeous clear water

Snow!!
My car, to prove that I was actually here

Ah, humidity, we meet again!

2009-08-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

I'm in Atlanta till Sunday! I already had a great evening with one of my great frinds Jamie, and tomorrow I am off to visit more friends and run around town tomorrow night with my mom and sisters....the visits are never long enough!

A really great compliment

2009-08-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

All of my clients have been so generous with compliments, and I always look forward to their testimonials at the end of my service.
This particular couple was quite intimidating because they were both "in the business."
He is a professional, published author and editor, and she is a big time publisher for a company in New York City.
So I was quite thankful and grateful when he wrote this for me:

Over the years I've worked with any number of photographers, both as a
writer and an editor. After watching Kali Foley with her camera, I would
rank her right up there with some of the best of them. Her enthusiasm and
willingness to both give and take direction made her a true pleasure to have
at our wedding.
-- A.J.

Wow.....so incredibly nice. What a compliment.
Lets just say he has LOTS of books on Amazon.com.

Can I Get a Witness?

2009-08-23T10:14:00.001-07:00

This is a story of temptation, perseverance, and partial nudity.

I have been really wanting to go to the Unitarian church in town, for a while. But after having Halle all week, then weddings on Saturdays, my Sundays are justifiably lazy. Which means I can come up with 2,000,000,000,000 reasons why I don't have to get up and go to church. Bad, I know.

So yesterday I swore, come hell or high water, I was gong to church today. Today was the first service back for the Unitarian Universalists of Bozeman (UUB). They do not do summer sessions I learned because everyone is out enjoying nature, like the rest of the Bozemanites, and expected to have private practice.

So I figured today was the perfect day, the first day back for everyone else, and I didn't have a wedding this Saturday, so I couldn't say, "Oh, I'm just too tired, God will understand."

Here is the temptation part of the story. I woke up to a blissfully overcast day. The kind that makes you want to sleep in, and not get up for church. Ughh, but I did.
I went downstairs to take the dog out. I have been swearing to myself to put a note on my door to remind myself, "Unlock Knob" because it is some special (by special I mean cheap and hateful) kind of doorknob that you can open from the inside while it stays locked from the outside. Which means that you can open the door in a sleepy rush and close the door behind you and find yourself locked out at 8:00 am. Which is exactly what happened to me this lovely Sunday. So I spent a good thirty minutes trying to figure out how to break into my new townhome, finally resorting to completely ripping out the screen of a back window and climbing in. Of course there had to be two giant labs harassing me and Zeppelin the whole time, finding it very exciting that I was cussing and ripping at my own house. People here don't exactly adhere to leash laws.

I finally get back in, and make my coffee, thinking, oh I've got another hour before I have to leave, but I better go ahead and check directions.
Only to find out that the service starts at 10, not 11. Its 9:55.

This is where the perseverance part starts. This was the PERFECT excuse!! Oh, I got locked out of my house, and then got the time wrong. Easy as pie, no WAY God could dispute that one! He saw the whole thing!

But something told me it was time to stop with the excuses. So I ran upstairs, threw on my go-to floorlength hippie sundress that has saved me in a rush so many times, a light jacket, sunglasses on my head to hide the bedhair, and ran out the door, thinking, I am going to be so late.

Luckily, now that I live in town, it was not that far of a drive. An easy bikeride really, and I got every green light, seeing it as a sign. I walk in, 10:05, ready to be "that person" who interrupts by coming in late, and lo and behold, the service had not started! I had made it!

Now I bet you are wondering about the partial nudity part of the story.
First, let me say that I am so glad that I went today. What a great place. Very low key, just a few short hymns, and a great female Rev. that told the story of her summer sabbatical of silence, calling the two monks that ran the retreat place the "monastic versions of Cheech and Chong." It was a wonderful sermon about the joy and value of silence, and as soon as they post it online I will send the link, it is worth sharing and listening to. It was not only inspiring, it was very educational about the benefits, joys, and troubles that we humans have from pure silence. I am going to get a silence chair today to start a new morning ritual, it just sounded so great from her story, and I am now totally inspired to go on a silence retreat myself.

Anyway, I am sitting there enjoying the story, when I shift to recross my legs, and realize something very funny;

I am not wearing any underwear.

In my haste to get out the door, I had dressed from the top down and since my dress was long, I had totally forgotten underwear!!

Embarassingly, I felt a giggle start to turn in my stomach, or as my grandma says, my giggle box start to tip over and spill out all my giggles. It just struck me as so funny, and it made me think if all the times that I would catch one of my sister's eyes during a prayer at a family gathering and see their lips tighten and their eyes squench shut, trying to fight the urge to laugh at one of the most inappropriate times. Which made me want to laugh even harder.

So thank you, God, for pushing me this morning, for making me get my bee-hind out of my house and into yours, and for reminding me that it did not have to be so serious:)

Picture me Confident

2009-08-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere once that we often compare our private selves to the public selves of others. Meaning we compare our first-thing-in-the-morning-no-makeup-fat-day-PMS-awkward-moment-selves, to the madeup-showered-best-fitting-outfit-perfumed-clean shaven- life-of-the-party-selves of others. Which is really just not fair. And it leads to shattered self esteem.

Lately I have been having this problem with my photography.

I have a bad habit of comparing my work to that of great photographers that have years and years of experience, training, passion, travels, self-exploration, and practice.
And I sometimes forget that I am only in my second year with a good camera, and also only my second year with bad exposures, failed poses, forgotten flashes, and post editing flops.

But its not fair to me to compare myself in this way. I can look at my photography across the past couple years and already see an amazing improvement, so I try to keep in mind where I will be in 10 years.

And I really started thinking, What is it that keeps me from feeling like I am good as these guys?

I like my style. I know I have an eye for taking good pictures in the right moment. But something just isn't quite making it for me. I am not at the level that I want to be at. There is something that separates me from the best.

So I started really looking at one photographer's work. I chose Doug Loneman. (take a look at his stuff and you will see what I am talking about, about it being one (or a few) steps above mine....I think his studio blog is easier to access than his main site, at least on my computer)

And the reason that I chose him is because he works with people. And that is all I really want to work with, I'm just terrible at shooting non people subjects because they do not excite me as much, and I think that really shows in the finished product.

His photographs are beautiful. Magazine quality, beautiful color pallets, amazing composition. I can picture muself taking the same picture but it not turning out quite as well.
Then I realized where the flaw in my thinking was.
I am comparing my raw, unedited photos, (because I do almost no editing) to his highly edited, polished and finished photos. No wonder I am coming up short.

Upon closer looks, I can now see the edits in every picture. I can spot vignetting, color fades, contrast increases, etc.

And it makes me realize, THIS is my next step in my business. THIS is what is going to make me say proudly, "Yes, this is how much I charge, and I will deliver and not disappoint you." Because I want to make a great living, but I also want to continue to impress my clients and peers. So I have uped the anty.

Because after really thinking on it, I realized it was my lack of knowledge for post editing (like Photoshop) and lack of kowledge when it comes to using my fill flash. So I have decided that the next investment in my business is to take a Photoshop course, and take lessons with my flash.

So try to do this in an area of your life. What do you want to be better at? Why? Then choose someone who excels at what you want to be great at, and really think about why they do.

Identifying flaws. Identifying solutions. Goal setting. It just makes ya feel better:)

Umm, heights I can Handle. Lightening, not so much.

2009-08-17T21:38:00.001-07:00

Through a friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing, I got asked to do photography for a new horse arena that is being built to be used for promo work. I was reluctant to do it at first since I really specialize in photographing people, but as soon as the guy said " And I can take you 65 feet up in the air in a bucket to get some aerial shots", I was in!!
So above are some shots that will be used in the marketing for Montana Horse Sense!

Now if you are wondering about the title of this posting, here is the explanation. On the day that I went out there, there just so happened to be scattered thunderstorms. And summer thunderstorms in Montana guarantee marble sized hail and lightening for miles. So I must have looked a little worried as we climbed higher and higher, with this looming in the distance:

And this below me:

And the guy asked, " You scared of heights?" The title of the post was my answer.

On another note, in between storms, President Obama flew right over head in Airforce One with his security helicopters circling the whole way! It was very neat to see, and I guess I just missed him in Yellowstone yesterday! More to come about that!

Putting Faces to Names

2009-08-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, and thanks for making the transfer to my new blog! I am really working hard to make some big changes in my priorities and in my life in general, so I thought a new blog would be fitting.

I know you guys hear so much about my work at Eagle Mount. Well, I was asked to do some photography for them as well, which I was delighted to do of course, and I took the opportunity to grab some pictures of my friends! So now you guys can know who I am talking about!

This is Danette, my rider! She is pretty much awesome, and her favorite phrase is "Look at me!"
She learned how to trot completely independently, so I think she has great reason to be proud!
She gave me the nicest card on our last day and some homemade caramel taffy, and I will really miss her! I am putting these photos in a photobook for her, I know she will be so excited to show all her friends and family!

These are my swimming kids! The first one is John and I, who has a lot of physical disabilities, can't walk, but is sharp as a tack mentally, and loves to swim around, and boss me around.

And if you're wondering why my hair looks all wet and matted down, this is why; Ondrej finds it hilarious to dump water on my head, and how can I deny that smile?
If you're wondering why there are not pictures of the baby, it is because the volunteer that picked her up and brought her was not able to make it to the class that day:(

I am really hoping that I can work it into my schedule next semester to play there again, I had SOOO much fun, met the most amazing people, and relearned the value of just PLAYING. Priceless!