self-portrait sunday

project 52, week 26
(I'm halfway done! Can you believe it?)
There are some moments you know are momentous as they happen, and so you record them on your brain, remembering what you were wearing, how you wore your hair. There are others that are only important in retrospect, so you're lucky if you can pinpoint them at all.
I remember, back when I was just starting out in this photography thing, reading an article about how to build your business, and one of the points it made was the importance of referring to yourself as a photographer. If you don't take yourself seriously, the article said, no one else will. So I had business cards printed up with "Laura Dye, Photographer" on them. (They're the same ones I still use.) And tentatively, awkwardly, quaking on the inside, I began to introduce myself as a photographer.
"What do you do?"
"I'm a photographer."
It seems small, but it was a big deal, to me anyway.
The thing I don't remember is, in my mind, much more important: the day I first thought of myself as a photographer. I don't know when or how it happened, but somehow it did. I slipped from being someone who takes pretty pictures, an imposter with a shiny electronic toy to being, in my own mind, a photographer. I know my camera blindfolded, I can tell you how to properly expose a sunset AND a person, I know how to make you look like you jump like mike.
I don't know everything--not yet. I'm working on it, and it's a longlong way away. In fact, I now realize just how far away I am from where I want to be.
But I'm a photographer. Everything else? That's just gravy.