This summer, Ashley of Sherwood Florist approached me about a shoot she had been wanting to do. She had specific ideas but it essentially came down to: I don’t care how we do this but I just WANT TO DO THIS. Now….THIS I liked. A lot. I’ve been longing for that feeling of the past, of pulling out my camera and just CREATING. That kind of “creating-for-the-sake-of-creating” thing that we can sometimes lose over time, same as an adult can lose their youthful imagination.

It’s not easy to feel like we’ve got it altogether and I often lose my strength in this. We are inundated with social media and the idea that we are falling behind our peers. The sense of false reality that can come with the internet that has the ability to beat you down. I have to remind myself that I’m a strong woman figuring things out and I get to be surrounded by other strong women that support each other and stayed positive on a long Sunday afternoon. Even though I don’t do things EXACTLY the same or seem to travel the same path as my fellow creatives, doesn’t mean I’m standing still. This only means I’m getting there in my own way in my own time.

This lead me to the title of this post. It’s the last line of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Like Frost stated, that both roads are equally traveled. There is no “right path” and no way to know where the path will really lead. But I know I’m travelling  and that has made all the difference.

I walked away from this shoot with a rejuvenated purpose and positivity that I had lost somewhere along the way in this crazy 2016. On this day, I was surrounded by other strong, successful, talented women who had gotten together because we WANTED TO, not because we had to and not because we were bored, but because we wanted to create and this was definitely the experience I’d been hoping for.

The amazing women who helped this happen:

Florals/Props: Sherwood Florist – Website | Instagram | Facebook
Dress: Whitney Diamond – Instagram
HMUA: H & Co by Jenna Hughes – Website | Facebook | Instagram
Calligraphy: Oak & Ash Handmade – Instagram | Facebook
Model: Nicole Lewis – Instagram
Photography: Jennifer Madino Photography – Instagram | Facebook

(Oh, and Cutter! He’s no woman, but he did help us pick things up and put them down!)

Jennifer Madino Photography
Engagement & Wedding Photography, Talbot County, Easton, MD
Tilghman Island, St. Michaels, MD