happy halloween

Witch Hat: Amazon, Hocus Pocus Sweatshirt: Oui Fresh, Jeans: Old Navy

I am the queen of Last Minute Costumes (see last year's attempt here!), and this year was no exception. This costume, though, might just become my go-to Halloween outfit. It's perfect all month long, plus or minus the hat, and the sweatshirt GLOWS IN THE DARK. We're not even doing anything remotely Halloween-y this year at all unless you count my annual Halloween plans of watching Hocus Pocus and stuffing my face with White Chocolate Reese's Pumpkins. I just like the tradition of dressing up as someone else once a year. Happy Halloween!

Reminder: If you missed my post on Monday, Thirty Days of Thankful starts tomorrow! Are you joining in?

20 minutes

When I was in Burlington a couple of weeks ago, my mom and I went a workshop at the local Garden Center. We made paperweights with dried flowers inside them, and while I forgot to take any pictures of our handiwork, I got take a walk around the grounds while we waited 20 minutes for the chemicals to do their thing. So. Many. Pictures!

thirty days of thankful: a november project

I'm embarking on a gratitude journey this November. Thankfulness and gratitude always spark conversations around Thanksgiving, of course, but what if we sat down and gave some conscious thought about what we're thankful for every day? I am on a mission to harness Intent, my One Little Word for this year, to show up in this space every day for thirty days and share a little bit of magic. Think of it like my Magic Monday series, but every day. I'll be posting a lot of this on Instagram too using #thirtydaysofthankful. (@annagutermuth and @agutermuthphoto) I hope you'll join me on this journey. Day one starts on Thursday!

life updates

October. Somehow you are almost gone away as quickly as you came. I feel like the last few weeks have flown by in a frenzied tornado of planning and travel and to-do lists. I'm trying to restructure my business and the way it's run right now. I've been taking online classes hosted by professional photographers, taking lots and lots of notes, filling in workbooks and trying to soak up all this information I'm diving into. Print samples and paper packs and pricing and finding that perfect prospective client have taken over my dreams. I traveled to Burlington for mini sessions filled with cute baby pictures and came home with a chest cold. My routine has been off thanks to traveling and my cold and I'm trying to recover some semblance of structure again so that I can get back to work and actually be productive. Aside from the numbers and business side of running this business of mine, I have a fun blog series and a few shoot ideas in the works for November that I'm excited to share. 

currently, october edition

drinking coffee like it’s water lately

watching Gilmore Girls for the 8392 time

procrastinating on getting my butt to the laundromat

recovering from a chest cold

restructuring my business model

staring at numbers and price sheets until my eyes cross

taking a couple classes to help me take this step

knitting a blanket I started in January

coloring with gel pens whenever the mood strikes

planning my Christmas gift list already

wishing you a happy Thursday 

the in-between

Scrolling through Instagram, every once in a while you see something that makes you go, "WOW." Tara Whitney has this Instagram account called "the in-between photos." Out of focus, blurry images we would normally pass on when presenting them to clients, but put together in grid form, makes everything look like something out of a dream. When Abby and I took pictures together last week, I was excited to see this one that she took of me.

dance it out

I went to Burlington over the weekend, and, as usual, a little bit of magic seeped in. On Saturday night, I had planned to just stay in, watch Roseanne and edit photos. My mom and Bruce were watching an episode of Saturday Night Live from the '70s where George Harrison and Paul Simon performed together.

Bruce said, "I have some old George Harrison records in the basement somewhere."

I said, "Really? LET'S GO."

I have never listened to music on records. Bruce has a few boxes stashed away in the basement, and my mom has a small collection from her youth tucked away on a shelf. My dad had a collection of 8-tracks before he sold the Nova that I remember flipping through one Father's Day years ago. I barely remember cassette tapes... In the back of my brain, there's a memory of my grandma playing one of children's songs in the car whenever we went to the mall. I have long since given away all the bubblegum pop and boy-band CD's that littered my bookshelves as a tween. My collection of mix CD's that my friends made for me in high school has a permanent home in my car: a reminder of late night drives down the back roads, singing along at the top of my lungs as the ultimate form of freedom.

I remember my first iPod, a bright blue Mini (this was pre-iPod Nano) that barely fit in my pocket. I spent hours downloading MP3's from Limewire and the corresponding album art off of Google Images in an attempt to organize my iTunes library. After high school, I finally upgraded to my beloved iPod Classic. (You just can't get 120 GB of good old-fashioned early-2000's goodness anymore. I wish mine still worked... I would kill to get all that music back.) Then Myspace crashed, Facebook took over, and you were either listening to music on Pandora, Spotify, or YouTube (and now everyone just streams their music anyway!).

I never fully understood the experience of listening to music until Saturday night. I still get chills listening to Mayday Parade's A Lesson in Romantics album if the mood is right, but Bruce was on a mission to give me a lesson in his favorite '70s rock. We started listening to George Harrison, then switched to The Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton. My mom came downstairs when Bruce put on her favorite song, "Key to the Highway." We had a family dance party in the basement, jamming while Eric Clapton wailed on the guitar. I filed it away as one of my favorite memories. The joy that comes from music and dancing and laughter with your favorite people is irreplaceable.

Bruce kept saying, "This is so cool. I haven't listened to this in over FORTY YEARS! I bought all these with my paper route money when I was a teenager."

I started snooping through my mom's record collection and found the definitive soundtrack to my childhood. The Eagles, Bob Seager, Bruce Springsteen, the Grease soundtrack... Tucked quietly near the back of the stack was Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. My face lit up. I stole my mom's CD as soon as I was old enough to drive and then begged to drive her car instead of my grandma's so I could listen to it. There was a good six months or more where it was all I listened to driving to and from Milwaukee every day when I worked at a portrait studio. She begrudgingly bought another CD, and Bruce conceded to let us listen to the record.

Singing along off-key to Stevie Nicks with my mom and dancing around the basement made me feel the joy in the best way. There's nothing like making new memories to the soundtrack of your childhood and being surrounded by the people who know you best.

friday already?!

I've been quiet around here lately. Sometimes your to-do list gets the best of you and I forgot to blog this week. I've been putting my head down and working on prepping for mini sessions in Burlington this weekend, restructuring my business model, and scribbling down lists in my planner like it's my job. My life basically feels like one big Type-A planning session for the future. I'm basically trying to legitimize my business and back away from digital files in order to sell prints and wall art so my photos don't end up in a drawer somewhere. My eyes are crossing after looking at numbers for so long, so I'm more than a little excited for downtime this weekend that will for sure involve me getting a Caramel Apple Sundae from Adrian's at one point or another. Happy weekend!

*photo credit to Abby Perket! I'll share more photos she took of me soon!

you gotta say no to say yes

Between the Harvey Weinstein allegations and #MeToo last year, and now the Kavanaugh trial and the #WhyIDidntReport stories on Twitter, it's been confirmed that the last year has been rough for trauma survivors. I have been blowing the dust off my trauma wounds and digging deep to get to the root of them. It's a painful albeit necessary process to work toward recovery and healing.

How do you even begin to silence the voices you've spent so long trying to outrun?

To silence the voices of your abusers, you must first give yourself a voice that is louder than theirs. I don't mean sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming as loud as you can. Learning the nuances of your own voice takes years of practice and discipline and work that truly comes from deep within your soul. It is something that I still struggle with every single day and will continue to work on the rest of my life. I am constantly reminding myself that we as human beings can do hard things. We can go to war with our scared selves inside our heads, but that only leads down dark depression wells. In order to shut down the people that hurt you, you have to exercise your right to say, "No."

Not "Sorry I can't" followed by a made up excuse.
Not "No, thank you."
Just "No."

As Oprah Winfrey once said, "'No,' is a complete sentence."

I think, in life, we all go through "Yes" cycles and "No" cycles.

We start off by saying "Yes!" to new adventures. Then we get so excited about life and all of its potential that we start saying yes to everything out of habit. "Yes!" to that extra shift at work on your day off. Gotta get ahead. "Yes" to cramming one more thing into our already jam-packed to-do list. You can totally complete that giant project in a day. "Yes" to one more load of laundry after doing the dishes. Gotta keep the house clean. "Yes" to one more episode or one more chapter before we go to bed at night. Sleep? What's that? Before you realize it, you're exhausted and cranky and the anxiety beast is inside your head, guilting you for not getting everything on your to-do list done for the day before you zonk out for another full day ahead of you tomorrow.

Once you recognize the cycle, you have to gain back your power again and start saying "No" out of an essential need for survival that can be masked to the outside world as mere self-care. Turning down that extra shift at work so you can actually get some sleep. Showering at crazy times of the day because you finally feel like you have the motivation to clean yourself. Building a routine for things like laundry and grocery shopping so you don't wait until your spaces look like a dirt bomb went off before you clean them. Keeping a set bedtime is also a tactic to help avoid those Netflix "One more episode" traps.

One by one, these little acts of saying no add up. Before you know it, you'll be able to set clear and defined boundaries and confront the people that try to cross them. You will harness the power of "No" to take back your "Yes." 

coming out of the mud

T-shirt: Femfetti, Cardigan: Amazon, Blanket Scarf: Amazon, Jeans: Old Navy

Transformations are so important. They're hard, yes, and sometimes we have to get in the mud before we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The mud is not a fun place to be. You feel stuck, uninspired, trying to dig yourself out of the hole you somehow found yourself in. But that mud is what drives us to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. 

I used to work for a JC Penney portrait studio. The same one my parents took me to when I was a baby, inside the mall I had been going to for back to school shopping my entire life. During the year and a half that I worked there, I had also built up a pretty sizeable business for myself doing senior photos and the occasional wedding. My studio work was never up to my standards. I spent a lot of my time there comparing the images I produced at work, when I didn't have a lot of experience with kids or babies at all, to my co-worker's images, who were mostly mom's already or just had a knack for being good with kids that I convinced myself I just didn't have. 

I took a five-year hiatus from running my business because I had convinced myself that I wasn't good enough. My images weren't good enough. Everyone else was better than me. I was still as in love with photography as I have always been, but I needed to reevaluate what I wanted from it after feeling burned out in the studio setting. Moving from my hometown and the majority of my client base also fueled my taking a hiatus. I didn't know anyone or have any friends in the area when I relocated... How could I possibly expect to turn total strangers into clients? (The self-doubt was SO real, y'all.)

That's the beauty of the mud, though. If you spend enough time immersed in it and let yourself get a little dirty until you don't feel so rough around the edges, it teaches you about how much power you hold and where you are giving that power away. My anxiety was overjoyed that I was feeding it so much of my energy. That comparison game is all your anxiety and fear and self-doubt ever wants to play. Eventually, you will reach the point where you're tired of wiping mud out of your eyes. You will grow to resent the mud and the hole you're in. How tired you are all the time. How you berate yourself because you feel guilty for giving up on your dream, and you begin to find ways to help get yourself out of there.

I dusted off this dream of mine in 2017, almost a year after my dad died. Coming to terms with my grief meant I had to listen to that little voice inside of me that reminded me of how my dad invested in his dreams every day, and in return did the same for me and my business. I picked up my camera again after taking pictures strictly with my phone for 2 years, bought a new laptop, and started from scratch just like I did back in 2009. This time, I'm not punching someone else's time clock and being put under so much pressure from persnickety portrait studio moms that have high expectations for "perfect" coming out of a ten minute session, or a corporation that wants images on an assembly line that results in profits for them and not always the precious moments that these clients want to be captured and hanging in their homes forever.

I always felt so out of my element shooting in a claustrophobic camera room with a back wall that was bursting at the seams with props and fluff. The mud was detrimental in me realizing that I didn't have to stop taking pictures and using my camera altogether. I just had to change my surroundings and the setting I was choosing to work in. I was made for sunny days, being outside in fresh air, exploring my surroundings and finding what works best for me given the unpredictable nature of working with natural light. I missed the challenge of racing with the sun and using shadows to my advantage. Now I am able to do all of that and feel fulfilled at the same time.

If you're in the mud right now, focus on your little victories. The moments when you forget you're in the mud will help you realize what you need in order to get out. I'm with you.

chase the joy

My business and more or less life motto is "Chase the joy." Through the years and different stages of life, I've always been trying to capture and document the things that make me happy.

I've been chasing the joy since that one fateful September afternoon in 2006 when my mom handed me her shiny digital point and shoot camera and told me to go keep myself occupied so she could visit with her friends. That tiny camera in my hand made me feel like maybe my world wasn't crumbling around me so much in a world where my sexual assault had happened and the only people who knew at that point were my boyfriend at the time and my two best friends. At least when I was taking pictures, I heard the quiet whisper of joy in my ear urging me to keep going, there is still hope for you here.

Chasing the joy for me has always involved a camera in some form or another, whether it's digital or film or just the camera on my phone. 2008 was a dark year for me. The defining moments were when all of my cameras were broken and so I picked up a pen and started writing. I applied to writing camp in Illinois the next summer and always brought the Minolta 35mm camera my Uncle Bill picked up for me at a rummage sale with me everywhere. Dropping off a dozen rolls of film at Walgreens became a defining moment of my teenage years. Eventually, I started shooting less and less film and saved up to buy my own (kind of) nice digital camera. I started a 365-day self-portrait challenge on November 6, 2009, and I uploaded every image to Flickr. My dad bought me my first Canon camera on eBay for Christmas that year. I could never express how grateful I am to my dad for spending money I'm still not really sure he had to spend to allow me to pursue my dreams.

I am still bury-me-with-that-camera attached to it, even though shooting with it is more or less impossible now. Nothing will ever be able to replace the sense of self I found just by picking up that camera and turning it on myself for the last decade. Everything—my business, this blog, my entire online presence, and community—that I have built in the last ten years, I owe to that camera and my dad's willingness to help his kid chase after the very thing that put the light back into her eyes and made her heart soar with joy again. This new chapter in my business and in my life is all for him, as the only way I have left to say to him, "Thanks, dad, for always believing in me."

I am inspired to chase the joy more than ever before, just me and my camera around my neck (and maybe some coffee for good measure).

six years

Dear Justin,

Happy birthday. Six years ago we were meeting in person for the very first time. A month and a half of emails, IM's, and laggy video chats all led up to this moment. When I asked you what you wanted for your birthday, all you said was, "To see you."

(And to think that now we've graduated from the grand gesture birthday gifts to signed copies of your favorite author's new book and funny t-shirts.)

But I still remember that week like it was yesterday. It started off like any other Monday... I got up and went to work as usual, but I kept pacing around Adrian's once the clock struck two because I knew you were in town. You were in your hotel room three blocks away, waiting for me to get done with work at four. I remember you sent me an email asking me if I had seen your mom's green Honda Civic drive by and I was mad that I didn't because I was pacing in excitement.

I'll never forget the butterflies in my stomach as I knocked on the door for the first time. I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. All my nerves melted away when you opened the door. Seeing you for the first time was like my heart came out and said, "Oh, here you are. This is where I'm always meant to be."

I've always more or less considered this week to be our second anniversary. It's always going to be special to me.

Now, the real question is: are we watching Naruto tonight or not?

Happy birthday, baby.
xo, Anna

today is one of the hard ones

I will scream this until I am blue in the face: TAKE MORE PICTURES OF (and with!) YOUR GRANDPARENTS. These are a couple grandparent snaps from my weddings this past year. Photographing weddings and being in the business of watching two families come together to unite as one, I've come to notice how special the relationship is between a grandparent and their grandchild. Grandparents always play a special role in a wedding day. You can feel the joy and love swelling in the room, how proud they are of that little baby that they once held in their arms once upon a time. Grandparents are really a special relationship to have in your life.

My grandma on my mom's side was one of the reasons why I decided to pursue photography as a career. While I was in high school, my family watched her slowly slip away from us. My mom and I got the brunt of it because we lived with her. It started out small... forgetting what she came into a room for, or what we needed from the store. Then she began cycling through names, calling me her own kid's names and even the dog's before she remembered I was her granddaughter. My heart broke as it happened more and more frequently as I got older. Dementia took her from us slowly over time, and suddenly I found myself needing a way to cope with loss before it even happened. Photography has allowed me to do that and more.

The photos are all that I have now that she is gone. They're my comfort when I am sad and miss her. Today is the three-year anniversary of her passing. I will take a moment to sift through all the pictures I have of her, making stink-face at the camera or laughing unaware that someone was taking her photo. The selfie I have of us with her sticking her tongue out, taken on the last day I saw her, always stands out as a moment where I was overwhelmed with joy to just being there with her. One day, my memories of summers at the pool with her or helping her bake chocolate chip cookies will fade away, but those photos I have of her will stand the test of time.

Photography is more than just capturing a beaming, happy face. It's all about the memories attached to the images and the emotion they can evoke from you just by looking at it. Every day I am thankful for this gift I have been entrusted with, and how I can use it to better serve the people around me. I owe a chunk of this business I am building to my grandma, always and forever. I don't know where I would be if it weren't for her and the love she taught me to give.

the love of my life

Dear coffee,

I know National Coffee Day was Saturday, but you must forgive my lateness. You are my favorite morning ritual. You are all about familiarity: the same Folgers coffee grounds, the same Anthropologie mug, the same International Delight Caramel Macchiato creamer. You never fail to provide me with a sense of comfort and an essence of home that exists now only in my memories.

It's the mornings when my grandma would get me up for school and already have a bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal and a glass of milk waiting at my seat at the kitchen counter. She would say good morning to me as she poured herself her second cup of coffee. The first was always consumed as she read the paper every morning. There was usually a 50/50 chance she was going to explode the egg she was trying to poach in the microwave, and we'd have a laugh about it as I read the comics and she tried to salvage her breakfast.

It's Saturday mornings on the weekends I spent with my dad. Puttering around in his apartment, still sleepy-eyed and seeing him drinking coffee out of one of his mismatched coffee mugs. I always coveted his Circus World mug for my hot chocolate during the winter. He had approximately 3,000 cups of coffee during the day when he took planes cars, trains, and buses to get to his jobs sites in Downtown Chicago, and I always got to help him haul his thermoses out of his car on Friday nights.

It's the mornings when my mom started working third shift and she would always bring me a cappuccino from Kwik Trip on her way home from work. English Toffee was my favorite, and if I was lucky she'd throw a little hot cocoa into the mix. It was our little before school ritual when I was in middle school and she was working as a CNA. Nothing like being hyped up on caffeine and sugar to give you the energy to put out so much teenage angst with your friends at lunch.

It's the mornings before I left for college when I bought a container of International Delight French Vanilla creamer from Gooseberries, determined to become a coffee drinker like a ~real adult.~ The cups were mostly cream and very little coffee, but it was a comforting ritual to have something warm to drink before starting my days that were about to be turned upside down by art school and my ever-so-slightly-soul-crushing entrance into adulthood 1500 miles away from home.

It's in the mornings spent curled up on the couch in our old apartment, knitting my first blanket and watching Gilmore Girls reruns on ABC Family back when it was still called ABC Family. That hour I gave to myself each morning made me feel like me again when pretty much everything else in my life had exploded into a giant flaming mess. That morning ritual gave me hope that if I could establish some sort of routine, maybe everything else would be okay too.

All of those mornings have evolved into my now, where I start every morning with a fresh cup. Pull up my dancing playlist on my phone and go take a walk around the yard while I drink my coffee. Feeling the quiet in the air and the warmth from my coffee cup makes me feel alive on the days that it's hard to pull myself out of bed at all.

I love you, coffee. Never change.