Many of you have already heard through facebook, twitter, etc. but for those who have not, we are so happy to announce the arrival of our son! He came into this world at 1:31am on February 26, 2010 at 7 lbs., 12 oz. He is perfect if we do say so ourselves! :0) We are completely thrilled with him - it's like the year and a half long inhale of breath since losing our first can finally be released. We finally have our family.
Now something that has not yet leaked into the internet realm as of yet is his name. It was something we thought a lot about, as I'm sure all parents do. We wanted it to have meaning, serve as an account of his legacy, and be given with purpose. To top it off, it needed to be different to pacify his parents' inner creatives. :0) We introduce to you Seven Patrick Daniel McLellan.
For those of you who don't know, Seven was the name of our first son who passed away. We decided to name him after his older brother so that his memory would be sure to stay with us always and his life would always be acknowledged. Patrick is Sean's middle name and SP are also his initials so without making him an outright junior, he is named for his father and can be "mini-SP" for his grandparents. Daniel is my maternal grandfather's last name and my paternal grandfather's first name which made it terribly convenient for us to be able to name him in honor of both of these incredible men with one name. Finally, McLellan is our last name so of course you would assume it's just his by default, but what you might not know is that there's no actual reason for Sean to have been a McLellan at all. He was given his mother's stepdad's last name - the name of a man who would go on to be his father and grandfather when he certainly didn't have to be. We are all so proud to take his name and have his legacy continue through our son. So there you have it. :0) This is our Seven - incidentally, born in room 7, on the 26th of the month - a day later in the month than the day his brother was born (November 25th). The page has officially turned and life moves forward with joy at last.
Thank you so much for all the outpouring of love you've shown us, through our struggles and our triumphs in the past year and a half. We have received such amazing support, encouragement, comfort and help. Thank you especially for all you've given us over the past few days. We have amazing friends and family, and your support has been better than anything we could have asked for. It made us smile to see all the encouraging comments all over Twitter and Facebook before and after his safe arrival. It was hilarious to discover that our son had his own Twitter hashtag (#McLellanBaby)!--and it was amazing to see that within hours there had been over 1000 views of the first image of Seven that Mel posted from her iPhone :)
A HUGE thanks to one of our closest friends, Jen Bebb, for flying in all the way from Vancouver, Canada to be there for us, and to photograph our first few moments with our baby. We'll share some of those later on, after we get to see them!
5. Never stop learning.
The moment you think you’ve come far enough and become stagnant, you WILL be left behind. Make sure that no matter how busy you get, you always make time to stay ahead of the curve. Amazing advances are happening in our industry right now, and there are new people getting into it all the time. One advantage new photographers have is plenty of time to be looking at the latest and greatest. Why? Because they don’t have a big backlog of work built up.
Set aside time to always continue educating yourself. Put it on your to-do list and calendar. Once that time is on the calendar, don’t push it back because other things come up. Innovating may not seem important at the time, but it will seem really important if you don’t do it. You’ll come to realize that things have advanced so far so fast that you don’t even know where to begin and will feel like giving up before you even start. Don’t let this happen to you!
What are some ways you can keep learning today? Assess your strengths and weaknesses and determine the areas you’d like to focus on. Then, take a look around to see what avenues you can use to improve. Workshops, conventions, forums, webinars, and educational blogs are a great place to start. Give yourself an allotted time every week whether it be 30 minutes or a few hours. Some tools are free and some you pay for; but something that is always free is practice! So you’re not good at shooting in harsh lighting conditions - grab a friend and practice in the harshest light you can find. Find a technique you’d like to implement on an educational blog and try it out. Search out threads on forums where people are talking about topics that are of interest to you. Engage, take initiative, and make things happen! There are many ways to stretch yourself and learn at your own pace, with the time you have at hand. The main thing is this: Get out there and do it.
So—what are you waiting for?
The camera bag is officially packed for the hospital - for real this time! There for a while it seems like it was every week that Sean would ask if we were done with shoots before the baby arrived and just when we thought we were finished, we would unpack that camera bag again for something else. :0) Our final shoot was with these two lovely people. They braved the cold to be our models for a private consult and we are so appreciative! Thanks guys! You rocked it! :0)
