Do What You Want: Tulsa Photographer

When you're little you just instinctively know what you want to be when you grow up. Me? I wanted to be a checker at a grocery store because you got to play with a cash register all day. Seriously. Who wouldn't want to do that? My brother and I use to play 'grocery store' in my grandma's kitchen. She had a wooden box my grandpa made that held tissues. This was our cash register. We would remove the box if Kleenex and place toy money neatly down into the box. I was usually the cashier and Scott would grab random things out of our grandma's kitchen to buy from me.


Now, Scott. He was going to be a professional athlete. Every time my mother would buy him a new pair of tennis shoes he would immediately head to our backyard and see how fast he could run in them. This never got old, internet. He would call my mother and I outside and have us time his sprints across our large backyard. The dog thought this was great fun too. She thoroughly enjoyed his eight-year-old windsprints across the backyard.

You see. We had great ambitions as kids. A grocery store checker and a professional athlete. My parents were Oh, so proud.

Somewhere along the path of growing up things change though. The world tells us that our dreams of becoming professional athletes are 'unrealistic' and that we should make sure and come up with a back-up plan... just in case. And we believe them. We believe the world when it tells us we can't do something or be somebody. We believe them.

We get the High School diploma. We get a degree in something that souned interesting at one time or another. Then we move on and take the next step the world is telling us to take to be successful. We get some sort of corporate desk job... if you're lucky it does not involve sitting behind a desk all day.

So, I took that path. After all, the world was telling me I was on track and going to be successful. It's not that easy. Job's don't just appear. They're not handed to you on silver platters no matter how high your G.P.A. is or the fact that you were president in 17 clubs in highschool and college.

Fast forward about a year and a half. I had the corporate job. I was content. But God had other plans for me. She walked into my office at 7:15 on a Tuesday morning and dropped a bomb. " I'm so sorry, but we're re-organizing the company and we have to cut your position." Numb. That was me. I tried oh, so hard to hold the tears back but wet, drippy tears began to relentlessly make their way from my eyes. I had been laid off. It wasn't until that night when I laid on my couch in a ball still crying from the events that had taken place that day that I realized something. I can't cry over this. I prayed for this. I asked God not even two days ago to remove anything from my life that He didn't want there. And there I was. Jobless. It made me excited because I knew He had something awesome for me, I just didn't know what it was yet.

A few months later I went on a trip to Minnesotta where God revealed to me the direction I was going to take. I had always loved photography in the sense that I could spend hours looking at pictures, organizing them and making photo albums. But really? Make a profession out of it?

I got back home and I remember having the conversation with my parents of my new venture. Much to my surprise they were both on board. My mother has been my number one encourager and now I sit here almost 3 years later to the date, telling my story of how the world can be wrong sometimes. It can tell you the path you have to take or you can take your own path and be successful at what really make YOU happy.

So what makes you happy? If you could do anything without the world telling you no, what would it be? Would you still sit behind that desk at work?

Here are a few of the I took while on my trip to Minnesotta. We took the day and visited Itaska State Park which was beautiful!  All I had was a small HP Point & Shoot, but I still cherish these shots because of what was revealed to me on that trip. I have a few of these framed in my living room as a constant reminder.