Bragging on Myself

Pride.  It's a bad thing, I know.  Of all those "deadly sins," it is the one I am most prone to step in, and more than once, karma's come back to haunt me when I've been too proud or boastful.  Yet, unable to contain myself, I continue to brag on myself.  I can't help it.  When I was in high school, my best friend's mom used to say about us, "You girls are so full of yourselves.  You two should print up t-shirts to wear around all the the time that say, 'I'm the greatest!'"  I think it's in my DNA.  So, here I go again .  .  .
Regular blog readers will know that I enjoy taking sports portraits and action shots, and I think I do a pretty good job.  I take all the team & individual photos for DD's middle school, in order to help raise money.  I don't take any money for my time or effort, and this year the fundraiser will fund about 10% of the athletic budget!  Yea me! (Did I say that out loud?) This week, a mom of one of the girls stopped me when I was getting ready to do the soccer photos.  She told me how much she loved the photos I took of her daughter for volleyball, said it was the best portrait ever taken of her and that she decided to use it with all her high school applications.  She then asked me if  she could book a sitting to do a family portrait!  I'm afraid I laughed. Out loud. Because I'm not a professional photographer after all.  Really.  I'm just a mom with a decent camera and a good eye.  But, I have to admit it made me rather proud when she assumed I was a professional!
Then, I got the "professional" photo back from DS' high school baseball team.  It's that crap photo on the right above.  Blown-out lighting, dead fish expression, and oddly cropped.  How could a photographer make my gorgeous boy look sooooo bad?  I compared it with the snapshot of him I took that day - it's the one on the left.  And again, I felt some amount of pride in my photography skills.  And some grumblies about having paid good money for that awful  picture!  
Final story.  Last night, there was an auction/fund raiser for the local little league (baseball for kids from 5 -14 years of age).  I donated two photo displays.  Each one had three 5x7 pictures of San Francisco Giants professional baseball players framed together.  And you know what?  People bought them!  One went for $90, and the other for $70! I was pretty thrilled.  And proud.  Again.  Hopefully karma won't bite me too hard for bragging on myself.  Most of these realizations came about while I was donating to good causes after all.