Adventure Awaits

I hope everybody had a great Spring Break! I’m excited and blessed to have spent mine with some great friends and incredible students hiking, taking pictures of everybody hiking, admiring nature and have great fellowship. I’d love it if you’d check out the gallery of Spring Break images I have titled, “Beyond Waterfalls,” by Clicking Here. I am so pleased and proud of how they turned out.

I am also ready to add, now that I can finally announce, that this summer I will be a Staff Photographer at Kanakuk Kamp’s. I am so excited for this opportunity to serve and to see how God plans to work in my life while I am there. I’m just a little over a month away from beginning a new chapter.

There has been a lot going into this leap. I’ve actually planned for this summer ever since summer of 2018. There has been a lot of thought and prayer going into this, because I will be walking away from two jobs, one being my job as photographer/media assistant at my church. I love my job there and the people love me, but I am not guaranteed to have that job given back to me when returning home. Through prayer and wisdom from friends and family, I’m taking a step of faith not knowing what my future will be after the summer is over.

You might be asking yourself why I am taking such a risk. Do I have bills to pay? Yes, I have normal bills, and especially a car note. That’s probably the biggest concern right there. However, I’m slowly learning more about the availability God has given me at this season of my life. I am not married, tho I hope to be one day. I do not have any kids. I’m not in debt nor am I really tied down to anything. I have so much freedom…so why not? Why not go off for a summer and photograph kids? Why not gain more community and relationships? Why not put forth money that belongs to the Lord to begin with, to invest in the time, work and joy that brings Him glory. Why not?

So the time will come when this website will still be up, but not updated for 13 weeks. Same goes for my Facebook and Instagram.

On to a new beginning, where the adventure awaits.  🙂

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Welcome to the Studio

So here is something new, since I am being kept indoors for the remaining of the Winter weather. I’ve been given the freedom to put together my first lil studio! It will be used primarily for filming, and making promotional video’s for my job. I’m pretty excited to see how filming in this new space will be!

Erin G. Parker

Hello 2019

Every new year, there is always a change. And that change in my life is the same change that reoccurs every single year: making a new habit of writing and typing out the new year other than the previous year. Now I have to get use to writing out 2019 instead of 2018. It might take me a month before I won’t have to think about it anymore and writing 2019 will become second nature.

Speaking of change, I’m not one to make new year resolutions. I see life as not waiting for a certain time or day to begin anything: New mercies and beginnings happen and can happen every single day. Starting off  a new year does not motivate me to start anything new; that kind of feeling wears off over time. Maybe for some it doesn’t, but it definitely does for me. I believe in living one day at a time, focusing on today more than one, two, three, four weeks or months from now. I don’t want to miss what God has for me today, what He desires to show me today, what He wants me to experience in His arms today. It is in those moments that change occurs in my life, to overflow into new decisions that I need to make when they need to be made.

But there are some changes that will take place in my life this year, some I already know about that will happen that have been in the works for almost a year now, that I will not be revealing for another two months. Changes I am very exciting about, but also have some places where I am facing uncertainty. Those bridges will be crossed when it is time to cross them. The Lord has been faithful and opening doors and leading me through them, I can still trust Him with what else there is to come.

Looking back on 2018, the biggest thing that stands out on my year as a photographer is that I took more pictures with people than pictures of just myself. Why is that? For a very long time, I haven’t had many people or community in my life. It is something I lacked a lot of, not because I didn’t want it. But because I felt it wasn’t available. I went to work. I went home. Thats a lifestyle I’ve been working so hard to get away from. It’s hard to get away from all that you’ve ever known, and for the most part, have been raised up in. But the Lord equips and prepares in His own time. I’ve seen such evidence of this going all the way back to 2016. I see the journey and the tough times that have come with it. But I smile and see the good that has been gained personally and spiritually.

I am greatly blessed by the people in my life. I value the friendships I have and are still growing with. And I really hope that I am a blessing of some kind to them too.  I’m ready for another year of growth with these people. I hope they will stay along for the ride. 🙂

Erin G. Parker

The Nutcracker Photo And My Thoughts Behind Creating It

This is the first time I placed myself in a fantasy type photo.

It wasn’t easy.

I was at work one day when I had the thought of making a Christmas picture. I remembered my mom having this old nutcracker ( it isn’t a real nutcracker, just a display piece ) that she usually puts somewhere in her house for decoration. I allowed my imagination take me elsewhere with what I could possibly do with it. I love fairytales and classic stories, which is one reason why I enjoy creating fantasy photo’s. I know there is so much I could have done having a nutcracker as the center piece of a photoshoot, but this was very short notice and had no preparation.

This is the one and only photo from this shoot.

I’ll begin with my thought process: I own a wedding dress. It’s actually the one I used for my Cinderella Theme Shoot back in late October. I was happy that it fit me almost just right. I walked around my tiny house wearing it the night before planning this photo, imaging how it feels to wear one of these things. Anyways, I had no idea just how heavy this dress was to wear until I took it in the woods and had to walk back and forth from my camera to my focus spot. It honestly wore me out. And when I had finally gotten the pose I was seeing in my mind, I remember unzipping the back part with an instant sign of relief with  terrible posture shortly behind it. I was seriously slouching and kinda had to pause for a moment to catch my breath. I am almost positive that I didn’t breathe most of the time I was running back and forth wearing this thing. Also, I was wearing a pair of blue jeans and lime green converse underneath this dress. I had to cheat somewhere, and getting dressed and undressed in the middle of the woods gives me a creepy feeling. My original shirt was hanging on a tree limb right in front of me out of view too.  I must also add, this wedding dress has a train, however, there was no way I was able to stretch it out as I would have liked. A partner would have been helpful, or somebody else to model for me so this kind of element would have been taken cared of. Why don’t I just buy a camera remote already? I don’t know. I procrastinate buying things I need: I save more money that way.

As I said, this is a wedding dress. So originally it is white. I had three colors in mind when coming up with this photo: Wine Red, Emerald Green, or Lavender. Wine Red was my first choice, obviously because red is my favorite color. But when playing with this photo, I had to admit, that I wear too much red sometimes. My hair is already red. Do something different. My second choice was green. But I believe the emerald green would have clashed with the background, and when testing it, decided that it didn’t look good at all on the screen as it did in my mind. So lavender was left, but testing light shades compared to darker shades of purple, I think darker is rich and more moody. I love moody photo’s and my style often reflects that.

Altogether, this photo took four hours to make. Thats mostly because there is another version of this photo, which I promise never to share, existing on my desktop, never to see the light of day.  My first draft of this photo I did not like and had already spent close to two hours on creating, only to strip it back bare and return back to the Raw file and start from scratch. It’s rare that I ever do that. I generally know what I want to do with most of the photo’s I take, then just do it. Also, it doesn’t take hours to do either!  But with this photo, I did not know exactly what I wanted. Deciding the tone and feel of this image took a lot of playing around before I was satisfied with this final version.

So for the short amount of time that I had in making this, I wanted this to be my way of wishing everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope it’s awesome, actually, it already is because of why we celebrate it. All because of Jesus being born to later give His life as a ransom for many for all to be saved and have eternal life in Him. It’s the greatest gift to receive, and it has always been free. Know you are greatly loved by God.

Merry Christmas!

Erin G. Parker