Portrait Session Giveaway<\/a>. As promised, it’s Christmas and I’ll be announcing the winner on my blog. Each story sent in reminded me of how big this world really is. I often get through each week almost like a little elf, doing the same routine and living inside my tiny bubble. It’s when I get to see the world through another person’s eyes for a brief moment that I get inspired. Each email allowed me to see the world differently, some were about people in need, some about people who don’t have much time left here on earth, some were just about capturing a special life. So you can only imagine how hard it was for me to make a decision because honestly each email made me teary eyed. It was too hard to pick a winner and that’s why I’m not picking one. I’m picking all of them. It may take me a little while to organize and plan, but my goal is to be able to photograph each person that was nominated.<\/p>\nI would love nothing more than to capture each persons life and to share it with all of\u00c2\u00a0 you. I want to hear their story, their struggles, what makes them happy, and what gets them out of bed every morning. Last night on Christmas Eve, this decision just kept creeping up on me. How will I choose? Will I pick the right one? What if I just choose one and I have all the other people in the back of my mind the whole time? They all really deserve it. I want to make them happy. I want to share a gift. I want them to know people love them. Seriously, my brain just kept thinking of a million reasons why I couldn’t choose just one.<\/p>\n
If anyone reading this knows me personally, you know how much I hate making decisions. Always have. It usually ends in just walking away from whatever I was eyeing up or just buying it all so that I feel better. Well here’s another case, where I’m just going for it all because it’ll make me feel better!<\/p>\n
One thing that my faith constantly reminds me of is to give back. I feel so fortunate to be where I am today that I couldn’t help but share some of it with others.\u00c2\u00a0 A business doesn’t just fall into your lap over night, its like an infant that needs to be cared for. I would be nowhere if God weren’t right beside me throughout my journey of getting this business rolling. I guess in a way, he’s given me the love to help feed my infant business. (Okay that just sounds weird- but like I said, I’m in a food coma right now.) I know a little portrait session can’t save the world, but its a start. It’s giving something back just to thank God for blessing me so generously. It just feels right. Pay it forward :)<\/p>\n
I am looking forward to capturing these amazing people to share with you. The emails sent in gave me a little peek into their life, but I know that their\u00c2\u00a0 photos and their story will proudly portray their inner beauty. Check back periodically as I will be sharing the email sent in about each nominee, the photos from their portrait session, as well as my experience in capturing these incredibly deserving people. I will be honored to photograph their life.<\/p>\n
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to send an email about someone who you truly care about, I told you that you should! Thanks for listening to me! Everyone who entered someone – check your email for details! Everyone else – check back soon for photos of the winners!<\/p>\n
Merry Christmas Y’all!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well its Christmas Night and I’m just getting a chance to stop for a moment and write this post. I lay here in bed with my laptop, just exhausted and wishing I wouldn’t have eaten that last bite of cake. I forgot what being hungry felt like, the Holidays always put me in a food […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1962"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31397,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1962\/revisions\/31397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenamato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}