My Sister's Not Dead and I Still Enjoy Photography, The Two Are Mostly Unrelated
Some General Updates:
My sister Christine is not dying of Malaria or Dengue Fever. She was just pretty dehydrated apparently. She's been posting picture from her trip to Cuba on her Tumblr account. I gotta say her composition is really improving. In my opinion she takes much better photos of every day life, compared to setting up a shot. She did a good job capturing the culture.
My nephew Orion got to leave the hospital on Sunday. I still haven't been to their house yet. I really want to get some good photographs of him so I may go visit this weekend. I took some pictures while he was at the hospital, but my phone doesn't have great quality photos and I haven't been taking many photos on my Nikon lately.
In fact I haven't been taking many photos at all lately. Every opportunity I've had I've passed up. I feel like I hit a wall. I want to learn more, find ways to challenge myself. I had the opportunity to watch Eric in action, photographing Andrea. He's pretty great at what he does. He's very good at directing, which I've always been terrible at. I've never been good at setting a shot up: I'm not assertive enough and end up directing as little as possible. Generally I do like to capture the person in their sort of "natural" state. Part of that is settling for it out of nerves and inhibition. I'd like to go out and take photos with Eric, but I start to feel really insecure because I know so little. My fear is shallow. He's critical, but I like that. I know he won't bullshit me just because I'm his girlfriend, but he won't be an asshole about it either. He neither glorifies my work out of pride (kind of like my dad) nor does he discourage it out of some form of competition. In fact he's very supportive. Along with this he's asked repeatedly to photograph me. I don't feel comfortable in front of the camera at all. There's a wall that I can't get past.