I'm a mentor! (Again!)

I love my job, I know how to do it, I have been doing it for years, but trying to teach someone how YOU do YOUR job is a whole other ball park.  Being a mentor is a total priviledge, but it's a little bit scary too.  You have a high school student relying on you to actually teach her something fairly important to her, and hope that you're explaining yourself well, and hope that she's actually learning something from you, something that she will take with her and hopefully apply to her life in a meaningful, significant way.  I mean, let's face it, I'm no teacher; I'm a photographer.  And frankly, I am still learning every day.  But I can share my personal experience and hope that it's enough to make her think, "wow, photography is really cool!"  That's it.  Well, maybe a little more than that...like, I hope she learned something too.  My mentoree, Amber, and I had a little time this week to shoot a little bit, just so I could teach her the basics.  We ventured around my dreary, foliage and flower free yard, but managed to find a few things on which to test out her newly acquired photography knowledge.......


But first, a shot or two inside with two of the most adorable children on the planet....What? No. I'm not biased at all.....

Amber's pics - I let her borrow my Nikon with a 50mm lens....

I love how you can make something like this textured tree into a really cool detail shot...

My pics...

Here's Amber, high school senior, AKA my mentoree (is that a word? because I keep using it)...

Avery found a pine cone...

This shoot was definitely a good lesson in detail shots, which are some of my favorite shots to take at weddings, or at all, for that matter.  We didn't do too bad considering we had nothing but leafless trees and dead grass to look at outside :)

Being a mentor is definitely challenging, but it's rewarding to know you may have helped shape a person's future....maybe.