I want to be a great photographer. Not just someone who gets randomly lucky shots from time to time, or who can take them into a digital darkroom and make them so distracting you can't really tell at a glance, that the photo wasn't very good to start with.

I want to be great. I want to be Ryan at Masterpiece Images. Confident that posing 10 adults, and 6 kids -3 of them being 2 year olds with no patience for family photos--will be easy, relaxing, and not at all a candidate for a Xanex day. I had to pop a Xanex to even sleep the night before, and I was only supposed to just stand where he put me.
I want to know how to pose people. To understand the perfect fstop for the shot and where exposure settings should be set. And walk around with my little light meter and understand how to use it and what it does. To open the manual and actually comprehend what the writer is trying to teach me, instead of getting a headache and tossing it aside.

I don't want to fake my way through this. I don't want to be just another wanna-be with a crap load of money invested into equipment she doesn't understand. I want to be GREAT. And it's heartbreaking every time I realize how far I am from that day. Dramatical phrase, but true all the same. I want to create beauty, to capture it. To freeze the most random moments in others lives, that are truly the most amazing.