Someday My Prints Will Come

Twenty-something years ago when some of you were just being born, I was hanging out with a bunch of Korean businessmen on a track somewhere in Seoul to witness the Samsung Games - not to be confused with the XXIV Olympiad which would take place a few months later in that same great city. This particular audience consisted of about 125 wives, children and, I guess, English Conversation instructors, of the employees of the numerous affiliated businesses based in Seoul.

Invited by my businessmen students, I decided to go along, and not having a zoom lens of my own, I left my Pentax K1000 at home and borrowed my friend Rebecca's Nikon, with a zoom which I had never used. And it would seem, didn't know how to use, although I did not realize it at the time. You see, Gen Y,we used to pop strips of emulsified acetate called film into the back of cameras, and when we got to the end of the strip, we wound it up in a neat little cannister and sent it off in the mail for developing. You never knew if you had a series of masterpieces or if you had overexposed every. single. shot. until you got that tidy little package of prints back and thumbed through them. You would practically stand, tapping your foot, by the mailbox with great anticipation, as if intense wishing would make your prints miraculously appear. Something like the last scene of The Lake House. Added to that, most basic 35 mm cameras used by us amateurs were completely manual. Manual focus, all manual settings. Well, auto-focus would have come in real handy that day as I somehow managed to misunderstand how to use that simple little lens and 97% of my prints came back looking like a bizarre attempt at some kind of impressionistic sports art.

Why is it that so many of our really embarrassing mistakes have to be so public? A week or so went by and my businessmen-students kept asking to see my pictures. I thought they would forget, but Samsung men apparently have ridiculously tenacious memories. Finally, I had to pull them out, but now what was I going to do - show them the 3 pictures that didn't look like a toddler had decided to foray into the photographic arts while I went for popcorn, or just hand over the whole batch and attempt to explain? I chose the latter. Saw that coming, didn't you?

What happened next was really odd. One of my businessmen-students, Mr. Cho, looked through the disastrous prints with a sort of semi-scowl, then looked me in the eye and asked,

"Miss Karen, what do you want to be?"

I looked down, shuffled my feet and mumbled, probably with a hand half-covering my mouth,

"A......um......uh......photographer...?"

Mr. Cho made a solemn, sober expression that I have only ever seen Korean businessmen make, and replied,

"I don't think so, Miss Karen."

Ha! Don't quit your day job, right? Now there's a promising beginning.

Returning home to NC, I was swept off my feet by the amazing Wes Lane, married, had 5 beautiful kids and embarked on a totally different career as a wife, mother, and home school teacher. That same old Pentaz K1000 has had to go in for several cleanings to remove the accumulated sand from so many family beach trips, and it took hundreds of pictures of my 6 favorite subjects before I finally made the switch to digital two years ago. I totally forgot the Samsung Games fiasco and subsequent grilling by my student until 2007, when my friends and I decided to do Project 365--taking a picture a day for a year. That jump-started my interest in photography--both in learning the technical side of the craft, as well as kindling the hopes of being a professional......um.....uh....photographer.

So, why on earth did Mr.Cho ask me about my ambitions while holding my botched photos in his hands? That seems a strange question to ask your English teacher at such a moment. I had never uttered a word about that desire to anyone - I think I was even a little surprised to hear myself give the answer. Was it so I would be discouraged and never pick up a camera again? No, I don't think so. I believe it was so that, 20 years later, while God was resurrecting an old latent dream, I would be able to look back and remember that that tiny speck of a dream had been there all this time, just waiting for the right conditions, the right instant in my life to begin to develop --(little photography pun there). Thousands of photos into my professional career, I can say that the timing was God's, and it was perfect.

You have dreams, too. Maybe you're singing the actual lyrics to Snow White's song, Someday My Prince Will Come. Or maybe there's a child out there waiting for you to come along and be her mom. Perhaps there's a ministry or an industry or an invention that is waiting for you. Sometimes you have to wait for it. Sometimes you may find yourself tapping your foot by the mailbox, but God hasn't forgotten. He knows what you're made of - the very skills, and purposes and timing He wove into you. Ask HIM what He has for you to do on this earth. Ask Him to prepare you for it. And then, when that point of time comes for you, be brave. Take the first step. And then the second....

All images copyright Karen Lane 2010.

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Karen Lane is a wife, mother, and lifestyle photographer in the Raleigh area and beyond. You can visit her on the web at Karen Lane Photography.