Tag: Happy

  • wins and discoveries

    Today is six weeks post-op and I am confident I am 100% recovered! I managed the entirety of the first segment of my Inhale Steve Ross yoga today, I managed 10 minutes on my stationary bike, and I managed a lot of my arm-related physical therapy exercises.

    I am feeling really, really good about having the hysterectomy. All things considered, my recovery was as uncomplicated as I could have asked for. I am thrilled.

    I got a vaccination yesterday and was asked if there was any chance I was pregnant for the first time. I just laughed and said, “Nope,” and explained about the surgery. The nurse laughed when I told her it was the first time I’d been asked that question since the surgery.

    We will have family visiting for the next few days and I am thrilled about that, too! Bowling is on the agenda; we might go to a jazz concert tonight, and of course the fireworks for the 4th. We like to go to the overlook by the high school to sit because it’s not quite as crowded.

    I decided to hold off on selling any of my camera gear. It would be better to sell after I officially close the business in August anyway. Plus, Jared is right: we do not have the funds currently to replace my camera if I broke it or if it started malfunctioning, so it is best to hold onto the backup GFX 50sII for now. I will likely reassess in January or so.

    I did figure out I can do 1:1 macro photography with my Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux lens, however, and I am thrilled! The photo above of one of our aging hydrangeas is one of my first attempts. It’s tricky and limited, however, because I only have the f2 aperture, of course. It works for shots like this but I will have to be picky about how I go about such photography because of the thin depth of field. Not complaining at all, it’s just an artistic feature. Another reason that lens is one of my favorites.

    I really do think it is possible I could survive with just my 80mm f1.7 Fuji lens, that Cinelux lens, and my 50mm f2 Minolta lens. Food for thought, for sure.

    You can read more about me here.

  • finding focus even when the camera won’t

    Four weeks and two days after my hysterectomy, I am finally feeling okay enough to do some light exercise. So, today:

    • five minutes on the stationary bike
    • 20 chest fly’s
    • 15 reps of my five physical therapy stretch band arm exercises

    I’m feeling pretty great about all that, if a little tired after.

    Jared and I got out to the lake last night and I got a sort-of interesting shot with the help of some lens flare:

    I was feeling sort of bummed last night. At the lake, I also tested some of my lenses on one of my cameras that has been fussy about its autofocus capabilities lately…..as in, sometimes the autofocus doesn’t work. I’d been planning to sell one of my cameras to help pay down some of our debt, but obviously I can’t sell a camera that might not be at its best. And I would send it to Edison, NJ for repair if I could reliably get the problem to replicate but it doesn’t always malfunction. So when I took this photo, I was sort of in a mood. The lens flare, though somewhat interesting, also captured the hazy frustration I was feeling.

    But this morning, I remembered that I do have a good number of manual focus lenses: I love my Minolta and my Cinelux lenses! And, the camera works just fine in manual focus. So, it appears that moving forward I will simply have a manual focus Fuji GFX camera and a GFX camera that I use my native lenses with. Not ideal for my plan to pay down our debt, but it does make use of my current gear and is probably a pretty darn good plan moving forward.

    Sometimes I have brief flickers of just selling all my photo gear and getting out of photography altogether. I know that is not likely healthy, and I know I’d likely just want to start up again probably less than a year after I got out.

    I know the answer: Get out and photograph more.

    You can read more about me here.

  • life in these times



    My aunt and uncle and cousins sent me the beautiful flowers in the photos above, having had them delivered Friday. So beautiful!

    I didn’t feel up to trying to get out the camera to photograph them until this afternoon, and it is clear that carrying my camera in my purse for the next six weeks is simply not an option at all. 

    All in all though, recovery is going well even though I’m only 3 days out from surgery. Pain is already almost non-existent and I’m going to attempt to sleep through the night tonight without waking up for pain meds. And, I’ve avoided the strongest prescribed option for pain so far altogether, which I am much relieved about. 

    These photos were taken with the GFX 50sII and my prized Schneider-Kreuznach Cinelux Ultra 85mm f2 MC lens. I love that my favorite lens was made to be an IMAX lens. 

    Emily P Freeman always cites Barbara Brown Taylor when she talks about “Things that are saving my life right now,” and it seems fitting to talk about the things that are saving my life right now:

    1. My gratitude list is at the top of that list of things that are saving my life right now. For a while I was publishing my gratitude lists both here and on social media. But it’s true that most days I itemize 50 different things or people or situations that I am grateful for. Keeping up with cultivating that grateful attitude really does help my mental health.
    2. In the interest of complete honesty with regard to the hysterectomy: the best investment I made prior to the hysterectomy was purchasing the 7.98 yoga pants that I found at Walmart two nights before surgery. While pain is minimal, swelling is rough and finding pants that have a very, very forgiving waistline has made all the difference, for sure.
    3. Having the surgery just before a holiday weekend means that Jared has been available for longer than he otherwise would have been, which has been a relief.
    4. Google Gemini has been an interesting tool for several months now. I’ve used it to plot blog ideas, Gemini helped me redesign this very blog down to color schemes for the links. I considered moving domain names away from my own name and Gemini helped me lay out the pros and cons of each, leading me to keep my own name as the current domain name. And that’s just only two examples…..there have been endless examples since I started using Gemini probably last October or so.
    5. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy techniques are also saving my life right now. I’ve long known to tell myself that “I am not my illness,” but I recently started reading The Happiness Trap. The psychological flexibility that I hope will come from separating myself from my thoughts and feelings I do think may actually change my life forever.

    As always, I continue to work on processing past trauma and what I am finding through my meditation and gratitude practices along with the techniques like cognitive defusion that I am learning about….all of that is helping me to learn to live in the present. Which makes nights like tonight, when Jared and I went to sit at the Marina for a while, all the more precious.

    Thanks for reading! You can read more about me here. Later!

  • a return to my roots: blogging


    The baby factory in these parts is officially out of business! I’m two days out from my complete hysterectomy. Mostly feeling good, mostly bored already and want to be able to do what I could do before instead of having to be a couch potato for the next six weeks.

    2025 has been hard for a variety of reasons. I don’t even know what to say.

    It has been announced on my personal Facebook page, but Caroline Price Photography is shutting down in August after the remainder of my current client galleries expire.

    I have photographed 48 weddings, one quinceañera, and countless portrait sessions. My heart is full. Thank you to each of you who have trusted me with capturing your memories.

    So, what’s next?

    The truth is, I’m not really sure. I intend to write here more often. Content will likely be stream-of-consciousness musings.

    And, I will continue to be into photography as a hobby– I will still take photos of flowers I come across, I will still take my camera everywhere for serendipitous photos. The hydrangeas in the photo above are on one of the bushes next to my house.

    Ultimately, I will be a whole lot more focused on self-care and tending to my family.

    And in the process, I am likely to reflect on the solid life lessons and growth that I’ve found helpful in the last several months.

    Stay tuned!

    You can read more about me here.