New Location, Visioning, & Photos

My friends, my people!

Hello there! Thank you for checking in with me through the hiatus in my business. From last September through the end of this past July, my husband and I were living in Houston, TX, serving as team members with Mission Year. The experience was nothing short of life-changing, and we're really excited to move forward in our lives with renewed purpose and values to continuously strive after living out. I'd love for you to check out our personal blog to read about some more specific experiences we had and things we learned.

After a lot of consideration and prayer, we've landed in Raleigh, NC! The "City of Oaks" made a lot of sense to us for several reasons:

• We were wanting to settle down somewhere more long-term. We want to be committed to a community and really delve into relationships with its people. Houston was great, but it's a little far from our family in Virginia! Raleigh puts us 2-3 hours from each of our immediate families, and we both have extended family in/around Raleigh. 
• We wanted to be connected with some like-minded people. There are churches & organizations across the country connected with the CCDA (including Mission Year and our church in Houston), and Raleigh is home to several of those organizations we hope to get connected with.
• It's a big (-ish) city! We've grown a little tired of suburban life & are excited for the uniqueness, diversity, and excitement that continuing to live in a city will offer.

Okay, self-reminder that this is my photography blog... thanks for bearing with me. :) So what does this mean for Kelly Hudgins Photography?!

I did a lot of dreaming during my time in Houston about what I want my photography business to look like. I'm reimagining it, putting names to some values and trying to figure out what things may look like logistically. Here are some snapshots of my thoughts:

• Beautiful, quality photography for everyone - value in serving people who may not typically have the means to afford professional photography
• Emphasis on moving people to recognize and honor their inherent value & worth - you are beautiful and loved because you are beautiful and loved. Not because of what you own or what you wear or how you look or what you do, but because you are a BELOVED child of God. 
• (A sub-point because it's related...) Natural beauty & simplicity - there may be some hair & makeup prep, or there may not. Emphasis on being content and confident just as you are, a challenge to embrace imperfections as part of what makes you beautiful. We don't need a lot of bells & whistles to represent your wonderful self and create beautiful artwork together.
• Community - promoting community across dividing lines and using my services & products to foster communication and connections within families and existing communities. We're created to be interdependent.

What does all of that look like when it comes together? Great question... I'm working on it ;) 

My goal is to get things back into swing early spring 2017. Fall & winter 2016 will be used to continue dreaming, planning, and making all of this become a reality.

What can you do to help me? Thanks for asking! -- Keep in touch - I'd love to hear your feedback on my thoughts included in this post and in future posts. Check back here, on Facebook, & on Instagram to stay connected.

Here are some photos from my time here in Raleigh so far!

The Raleigh skyline <3 

Delicious gelato at Sugarland 

The African American Cultural Festival

Upper-right: My husband Andrew & our friend/roommate Maggie :)

The NC state capitol building

Deco Raleigh - super cute shop with lots of local goods

William B. Umstead State Park

THANK YOU for sticking with me & checking out the post! Let me know any feedback and/or advice you may have as I continue the visioning process for my business & work to make it all become reality. :)

Love to you all!
Kelly


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Mission Year Begins!

Hi, everyone! 

Today is a bittersweet day for me, because we are beginning our adventure with Mission Year​ (!!), but that also means my business is now officially on pause. For the next year, my husband and I will be putting all our focus on loving and serving the people of inner-city Houston, TX. I am so excited to find out all God teaches me about serving others with all my heart, and I can't wait to see how He uses it to transform my business upon its un-pause. 

I plan on posting some photos throughout our adventure on the KHP Facebook page, so stick with us!! Also check out our Mission Year blog to stay even more updated with what we're up to during the year.

Thank you, as always, for your incredible support! 

Love,

Kelly

Big News ~ Mission Year!!

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." 

Proverbs 19:21

That verse has stuck with me since I first read it years ago. It reminds me that I'm not in control of my life as much as I'd like to think, but that's a good thing. God has much bigger and better plans for me than I could ever dream of. I can think of a few times in my life when God showed me that my plans were not His. 

One that stands out is when I had a Pre-Physical Therapy concentration for my first three years of college. It took struggling in a difficult physiology class to realize that maybe three years of physical therapy school to become a Doctor of PT wasn't for me (even though I only had a couple classes left to finish up the concentration). I didn't want to give up something I'd been working diligently toward and enjoying (mostly) for so long, but I also didn't want to find myself in a place where I'd continue to struggle for a few more years. Ultimately, through lots of conversations with friends, family, and God, I switched to study education and became a teacher. 

Sometimes it's hard to make sure decisions I'm making follow God's will instead of my own. At times our two plans line up, but it takes a lot of prayer and discernment to find out either way. Andrew and I were very careful to make sure our most recent big decision wasn't based on our own agendas, but rather on following God's call for our lives.

We have always known that we wanted to do missions of some sort - going out to make the world a better place in God's name and being transformed ourselves in the process. Before Andrew and I met each other, God placed a passion for justice and equality in each of our hearts. It breaks us to see people treated unfairly - in an inaccurate representation of how God loves them. We've dreamed of what our missions experience could look like someday down the road, discussed a couple different organizations that we could partner with, and were comfortable letting God guide those decisions when the time came around.

We were at a fun, Irish, worship-y Rend Collective concert in September when Andrew had an experience that's really difficult for him to describe. 

"The best I can do is to say that while they were playing I was completely overwhelmed. This feeling or sense was so strong that it was akin to being hit by a 2x4." - ouch - "I couldn't focus at all on what the band was doing. About 45 minutes out of the hour-long set are a complete blur to me. There was also this rushing warm sensation - like crawling into a bed with flannel sheets and an electric blanket in the middle of January. While I couldn't focus at all on the band the only thing I could focus on was the word 'Go!' Instantly when this feeling hit me I knew it was something from God."

We had a very quiet drive home, mostly saying "That was a really good concert!", talking about the new/unreleased songs Rend played, noting on the opening bands a bit, and then silence. I thought the silence was a little weird but didn't think too much of it. 

Andrew didn't mention anything about his 2x4 experience until the following evening at home - he wanted to take time to journal and pray about it before saying anything. I didn't have any similar experiences at the concert, the bands didn't mention anything about missions, and his comments caught me off-guard. However, I fully believed what he was saying and wholly trust that it was a not-so-gentle nudge from God that our missions experience is closer than we had originally thought.

So... Get to the point!

I could give so many more details, but I'll spare you. Andrew and I are taking the "Go!" command literally! We believe that for whatever reason, God is calling us to wrap things up here this summer and GO this fall. 

We applied and were accepted to participate with an organization called Mission Year. September 2015 to July 2016 we will be living in in a more under-resourced neighborhood within an inner-city (either Chicago, Philadelphia, or Houston). We will be living with a small team of Mission Year participants, volunteering at local agencies that directly serve the community in some form, attending and participating in a local church, and spending the rest of our time getting to know our neighbors and treating them with the same kind of love God has for them. There are many unknowns at this point and a few more details we do know - if you're interested, please keep up with our Mission Year blog at https://akhudgins.wordpress.com. We will be updating it with more general information about the organization and program, why we chose Mission Year, which city we end up being placed in, our experiences throughout the year, and more. Believe it or not, I'm trying to use this blog post just to share the news (although I'm sure you can't tell based on how much I've already written...)! 

What does this mean for what you have going on now?

Photography

First, I am honoring everything I have booked this year (thankfully I had only booked through August anyway) and am available to book more sessions and weddings from this March to July. These clients will receive the same experience that all my clients have received; I am in no way backing down throughout the year! Continue following along with us here and on the Facebook page.

Photography is still my passion, and I believe it always will be! That being said, I hope to use photography somehow throughout our Mission Year year to serve the community and the agency I work with, but it is impossible for me to run my business while I connect with my new city and fully participate in the Mission Year program. Kelly Hudgins Photography will be put on pause, which makes me really sad. However, I trust that the experiences I've had in the last few years and the things I learn about myself and about community in the upcoming year will be SO formative to my business when I restart it. I fully intend on and plan to restart my photography business when our situation allows it, and I hope that's in God's plan too. :) Only He knows where we'll be when that happens (we won't necessarily be coming right back to Northern Virginia) and what my business will look like, but I am confident in saying that I won't really feel whole without a camera in my hands and smiling faces looking back at me. :) It is my dream to use my business as a ministry somehow, and I'm thinking that God will mold my heart during Mission Year such that I'll have a better idea of what that will look like. 

Teaching

I've been playing the full-time teacher, part-time business owner and photographer game for about a year and a half now. I haven't reached a lot of discernment as to whether being a full-on teacher is part of God's plan for me, yet. It's easy for me to love people of all types and ages, but there is so much that goes on with teaching that isn't actually teaching. (You've probably heard that before.) When I told my co-teachers and my principal about our upcoming plans, there were lots of kind words and sad faces - Comments that make me feel bad about leaving, but reassure me of my effectiveness as a teacher and value as a staff member. I'm asking Mission Year to not place me in a school setting so I can see how much I miss it - to better discern whether God ultimately has me in a school or not. I'm more open to an after-school program kind of setting, so I'll let you know what I end up doing!

Andrew

One of the main reasons we weren't planning on going anywhere next year is because Andrew has one more year of seminary school before he earns his Master of Divinity degree. He was also just appointed as Associate Pastor of Youth at our church this past July, so now he'll only be serving one year in that role. His education will be put on pause, which can be difficult. There will be opportunities to transfer credits elsewhere and finish his degree once we finish Mission Year, but we (he especially) have had to become comfortable with the idea of potentially not finishing the degree. We just don't know what life will look like! He never went to seminary to become a pastor, but rather to receive more theological education. He's certainly done that, but there is still value in finishing what you've started and having an impressive degree to prove your hard work. We're trying to be comfortable in valuing the process more than the piece of diploma paper at the end. Ultimately, he's received an awesome education and made wonderful friends through it. 

Sometimes when I start blog posts I don't have much to say, and other times I start and have a hard time being concise. Thanks for sticking with me, since this one definitely reflects the latter! I mostly want you to know that I value what I have booked for this year, will be putting my business on pause, and fully intend on starting it back up when I can. For more information about Mission Year and our upcoming experiences, refer to our personal blog, since I don't plan on posting many more details about it here. 

YOU are incredible. Thank you, as always, for your amazing encouragement and support.

Love,

Kelly

2014 Holiday Recap

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

What good are all these blog posts if you don't know the gal who's writing them? I returned to middle school today after a two week break, and ohhh my, it was a needed break. :) Relaxation and time with family were abundant, and it was wonderful. While I may not know all of you personally, I'd love to give you a peek into my holiday season! I took a bit of time on Thanksgiving to photograph my stepmom's beautiful table details before enjoying the meal with family. I didn't take as many artsy photos on Christmas or New Year's, but I hope you enjoy those photos too!

Below: I love making detail photos nice and straight like the left photo, but something about the right photo catches my heart.
There is beauty in imperfection (and slightly angled napkins).

You can see upside-down Kelly in the spoon... Hi there!

China plate detail <3

A peek into family time.

This is my step-brother Chris and his son Cal. So cute!
We missed my other nephew Brayden as his mommy was very pregnant at the time with his sister Scarlet and couldn't travel down from PA! 

Dad & Linda prepping that TURKEY.

Handsome men - my brother Ben and hubby Andrew. :)

My grandma - such a sweet, sweet gem <3

Cal playing with his mom Mallory!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Now, Christmastime. :) This is our Christmas tree!

If you're looking to get Christmas cards next year, consider Love 146.

Love getting cards (...and Reese's!) from my clients! Thanks Krauss house! <3

That's one of my favorite photos from our session, too.

The week of Christmas was busy busy (but thankfully my first week of winter break).
Our first stop was Chesapeake for a couple days, where we celebrated with my brother, grandparents, dad, & stepmom.

This is my brother's little Christmas setup at his house :) 

The Christmas lights reflected from the background are a nice touch!!

At Dad's house - He & Linda gave us Nationals jerseys! 

We're going to feel so much more legit going to games now!

Second stop - Back to Warrenton for Christmas Eve church services! 

Andrew led the first service, we attended the second service, then we left for Cartersville!

(Pictured below: Papa's Santa suspenders <3) 

Third stop / Christmas morning: Mema & Papa's house with the Hudgins!

They have steak for breakfast on Christmas... UMMM... <3 <3

Sister snapshots! Maybe you remember Erin from her graduation photos?

Fourth and final stop: Good ol' Altavista, Andrew's hometown.
We were there for a few days, and his mom's side of the family came into town for their annual Christmas gathering Saturday.
Crowding into Nanny's living room had been getting pretty tight, so they reserved the church social hall for the festivities. :) 

We spent the second week of my winter break at home in Warrenton, getting things done around the house, relaxing, and preparing for
something I haven't announced online yet... That news is coming up in another post!
(And I'm at that age when I feel like I need to include the disclaimer: Nope, I'm not pregnant. That is not the news.)

Our New Year's Eve consisted of de-decorating from Christmas (boring), watching How I Met Your Mother (awesome), and drinking sparkling cider (yum, but not so much when the carbonation messes with your already weird-feeling throat). At least Andrew didn't fall asleep before midnight this year... I made him stay awake. Well, actually - we can probably thank How I Met Your Mother. :)

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the 2014 holiday season with friends and family. If not, let's be better friends - I'll hang out with you! :)

Thanks for sticking with me. Talk to you soon!

Love,

Kelly