Photography for photography's sake.

I decided to take photos today.

Now, I realize that phrasing it that way makes it sound like a task. Do not be mistaken—photography is what energizes me. However, things have been crazy busy. As you can imagine, moving and settling in to a new home is quite a lot of work. It’s funny, too, because I can tell when I haven’t taken pictures in a while. Photography is not just a hobby for me; it is a release. Stress melts away. Also, as strange as it may sound to some, I connected with God in a different way through photography. It’s amazing.

Thus, today, I made a decision to take photos. I packed the gear I would want into the smaller of my camera bags, and walked around campus. I also brought my dear friend, Willis, with me. Willis is a gnome. My sister has a whole collection of them. As part of my moving-to-college gift, she gave me one of them. Therefore, as you may guess, Willis is very near and dear to my heart.

My dear friend, Willis.

After taking some photos, I got a hold of my friend, Annette. She is the one who I went with to Serve Day. Please allow me to tell you how Annette and I met…

Annette and I were originally in the same SOS group. Our leader had made a facebook group for all of us. I added Annette as a friend, wanting to say hello and introduce myself. We began talking over facebook, and learned about each other. I was excited to get to meet her in person, and we had already talked about photoshooting.

 One night during orientation week, I was outside the bookstore and I heard, “Olivia?” I turned and said, “Annette?” We laughed and hugged and started talking.

Well, the first time we split up into our SOS groups, someone came up to Annette and said that she’d been switched to a different group just because of numbers. We were both sad, but we’ve continued to talk. And so we already got a mini photoshoot in.

We even kind of matched.

This is my favorite picture I took of her that day. She’s so incredibly beautiful, isn’t she?

My dear Annette.