Allison Bess: Scottsdale Wedding Photographer & Phoenix Senior Portrait Photographer

Lately I’ve been thinking of all of the things that label me and what they really mean: sister, daughter, girlfriend, photographer, artist, student, woman, I could go on and on. I feel like too much of the time we focus on the labels people put on us and how we can “fulfill” those ideals and stereotypes. Labels sometimes can consume our minds and change what we think of ourselves. The thing that really got me thinking about this lately was twitter. Twitter gives you 140 characters to tell the world who you are. So much of the time, I see people say things like: Wife. Mom. I work for this company. I have [this] as my job title. etc. Now I know a Twitter bio isn’t a very good example because there’s not much one can say in 140 characters, but it’s the idea behind it. When you walk up to a businessman and ask, “Who are you?” chances are he’ll say I’m a lawyer, I’m a CEO, blah blah. I know I do this too so my goal is to try and strip all of the labels away from myself, even if it’s just in my mind. I want to get down to the core of who I truly am and expand on those things that I love doing and focus on them more, I want to think of all of my favorite things in life and find a way to enjoy them, I basically want to focus on taking away everything that the outside world puts on me to categorize me or to make sense of where I fit in and I want to just be a label-less me (even though I know the world will never stop labeling.) I’m finding that this is really hard to do in a business, in a world of students as my peers, in a world where the photographic community seems to expect the same things from most people (not photo-wise – more method-wise.) It’s hard to break out of all of these molds to be who I truly am, yet stand out at the same time. This life I’m living and the dreams I’m pursuing are still so new to me and it will take awhile to break out of what I think I should be and start being who I really am. I’ve realized that one way to do this is to start doing things for myself and not spend every waking minute working for my business and school. I will be so much more whole this way. I want to focus not just on photography for my wonderful clients, I want to explore and push the limits of my photographic comfort zone so I won’t grow stale. I want to shoot more for myself on the side, whether it be landscapes, or whatever my heart desires! I want to start painting again like I used to (I’m no Van Gogh by any means at all, but it makes me happy and peaceful inside.) I want to bike more and feel that amazing wind in my hair. I want to find and focus on those things in life that I truly enjoy. I know that this will improve my life. :)

I encourage you to take some time to really think about some of your favorite things in life. Think about times when you’ve felt completely happy, completely at peace and try to recreate those feelings! If you do this, I’d LOVE to hear some of the things that make you guys feel happy deep down – whether you leave a comment here, tweet me, text me, facebook me, anything. I’d honestly love to hear about it! :)

To prove to you that I’m trying to start back on doing things that I love, I decided to make Ryan a painting for Valentine’s Day and here’s a photo. It’s not anything special or that took a lot of talent, but I really enjoyed making it and I hope that I will do something like it again soon.

What makes you happy? If you aren’t doing that, why not?