S&E: 8 (SOOC) Self Portrait

Not a huge fan of self portraits.  I usually look terrible and feel embarrassed to share them.  Plus, still internally debating how much identifying information I want to post out in the great big blog world... 

But - I wanted to give it a go and see what I could come up with.  A handful of self-conscious images, and then this:

SOOC

This is where we park, thank goodness because I never have to shovel snow.  I love you underground parking.  I realized I have pretty tight posture when I'm taking photos:  it was also dark in the garage, and so I was being like a statue to decrease camera shake.  I was trying to experiment with layout, rule of threes and visual lines.

So that's me.  In my brown winter coat, wearing jeans and carrying my camera bag.  A little bit of a cop-out - er, compromise?  I do promise to practice self portraits, and maybe one day I'll get gutsy enough to post an image.  Kudos to all of you who did!

Walking In This World

Tomorrow morning, I am starting a new challenge:   Walking in this World. 

The challenge is a 12 week course to follow along with Julia Cameron’s Walking In This World.  She is the author who created the Morning Pages, in which every morning you are required to write three pages of just pure thought, every week you take a walk and also go on an Artist's Date.  Oooh, I love the idea of an Artist's Date:  a museum, making things with other people, going to the craft store...

I've been feeling like I want to spend more time writing, and using my journal again.  But I'm not going to lie - I feel a little uncertain about what to expect and if I can do it.  But I'll give it a try...

And, I am almost done my February Thing A Day...

creativeTherapy: February / A Year in the Life of An Art Journal: Fight

Along with the photography challenges I'm following along with (Scavenger Hunt & Now to Wow), and the Thing A Day challenge for February (and something else coming up for March...), I've been also working in an altered book and following along with two art journal challenges.  Yikes, this seems like a lot, but its all good stuff. 

Two prompts came up at the same time, and I've been trying to get them done.  They were both really difficult and meaningful, hitting me in a vulnerable spot.  I felt like they go together, and so I worked on them simultaneously.  One was past, one was a wish for the future.

From A Year in the Life of an Art Journal:
THE PROMPT: Fight
THE SONG: Breakin' Dishes by Rihanna
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE: Bleach

I used a bleach pen that we normally use to spruce up our grout, and experimented on paint, magazine images, and types of paper.  I wasn't really pleased.  The bleach didn't have much of an impact.  Then I used some black card stock and started writing some heavy words using the bleach that I didn't realize were in me.  Those became the basis of my interpretation of the prompt.  To make a long story short, I used to equate fighting with love.  I've since been taught otherwise, and that has been extremely healing.  But I have a lot of residual feelings that are just as conflictual as equating fighting with love. 

From creativeTherapy: 
What are you (or would you be) giving your children that you wish you’d had?

This was a hard one to start.  Seems like some people have babies easy peasy, and others, its an anguishing process.  I guess I fall in the later category.  I've been thinking a lot about "fairness" and the type of mother I would be, and fertility and being "ready."  Frankly, we are so beyond ready, it hurts.  All I can think to do to be more ready is to be as healthy as possible, to keep dealing with my "stuff", and to spend as much time together and with myself as possible.  But that's only so satisfying. 

A lot of my ideas for this one built on the previous prompt.   I couldn't help but feel like I was sending out a plea to our one-day baby, trying to prove that our home would be warm, and full of love, and that they would be given both lots of support and lots of freedom to grow and learn. 

And a shout out to the elephants:  In my magazine cuttings, I ran across this article about elephants in families, and how they fight, protect, and wander alone, all part of the growing process.  I had to include all these amazing images.

Scavenger Hunt

Woo hoo!  I was able to do the scavenger hunt again this week!  I'm pretty excited, because I am thinking about photography again.  As I was putting these together, I realize I'm still a lot all over the place, and I feel like my edits are far from perfect.  But I'm learning, thinking and practicing.  Which is awesome.  And thank you so much for welcoming me into your community - I was happily overwhelmed last week.

1.  Capture the Sky

The skies here are not so interesting, they are flat and dull.  Yesterday, there was a nice feathering of clouds behind this municipal building.  Score.  Cheat:  the sky was not that blue.

2.  Everyday

I took this photo in Panera, our favorite place on earth.  The light is a little wonky.  

But I'm a big believer in eating an apple a day. 

3.  Furry

Furry was hard!  I don't have anything furry in my apartment, I don't have any pets. 
Then I remembered these buds right outside our apartment building - they are amazing, they've held on for the whole winter.  I have no clue how I captured the little fuzz around it.

4.  Life

It snowed again today, and we had errands to run.  I kept thinking about how everything just continues onward even in the snow, it doesn't stop.  And I loved how the green arrows keep us moving forward.

5.  Blurred

This is a sneak peek into my attempts at a self-portrait.  We park in a garage and I have always wanted to take a photo in that mirror.  That's my husband in the background, getting antsy.  I love the lines and shapes in this image. 

S&E: 7 (Edit) Pink

Another week of shooting and editing, led by our fearless leaders.  This week's prompt, pink.  That's my original to the left. 

I went a little action cah-rae-zee.  I like clicking the action, watching it happen, and not knowing what the heck just went down, but gleefully choosing save each time I do it. 

My hard drive, however, does not like it so much.  Which is good because these edits begin to stack up.  How do you all choose just one?  What do you do with them all?

And then I answered my own question.  I started to post all my many edits, but I kept staring at one.  I like it.  It feels just right.  

Actually, I can't believe that I did that.  Yay.

ABAW:7

Female friendships. 

I envy those who seem to have seamless, easy relationships with other women.  As an adult, I'm trying to develop healthy, supportive connections.  But as a teenager and young adult, I found myself trapped in suffocating ones, explosive ones, abusive ones.  As I write this, it is occurring to me that some of those friendships were abusive.  Why do we do that to each other? 

And so now those experiences flavor my interactions with women.  I find myself pulling back to protect myself, or assuming that someone wouldn't like me, or would see the negative parts of myself rather than want to help me celebrate the positives.  I realized this again, as I attended my second yoga class:  I assumed that others would not like me.  That's crazy! 

I don't want to live a life that tears others down.  I want to live in a world that lifts others up.

Scavenger Hunt

For many, many weeks I've been trying to do this photo scavenger hunt.  I was going to give up and claim that I could never do it (with dramatic hand gestures and all).  But this week, the things to find were all easily findable, so I had no excuse.  So here goes!

1.  Chocolate

I have not been eating sugar for almost a year (except little planned cheats here and there).  I've recently been dreaming about eating chocolate, so this one was torture.  It smelled so good while I was shooting.  But I put them all back in the bag when I was done.  Sigh.  Torture.

2.  Numbers

 My sudoko book!

3.  Canned Food

I'm proud of myself on this one.  Not because its a particularly good shot, but because this pushed me to really think about what I was doing.  Everything from framing, to layout, to focus.  

4.  Music

I love you, iPhone.  

This little gem randomly pulled one amazing song after another while I was taking photos, cleaning my apartment and folding laundry.  Its amazing, a whole new way of thinking about music.  

5.  Stacks

I mentioned the cleaning of the apartment, right?  I had too many choices for this one:  the stacks of magazines, the stacks of books, the stacks of random crap.  These are all waiting to be "processed" - cut up to be used in my art projects, fun articles/recipes ripped out for later use, and the remainder recycled.  I love, love, love these body+soul magazines.

S&E: 7 (SOOC) Pink

Pink.  Hmm.  Actually not so easy to find.  And, finally, I spotted those super sharp, pink handled scissors that I love so much, standing tall in my terra cotta pencil holder.  I'm curious how the edit will work on this.  There are so many colors in this image, I want to bring the brightness down a notch while keeping true to the pink. 

S&E: 6 (Edit) Love/Romance

Its interesting how much can change in a week...last week we were enjoying our romantic valentine's dinner.  This week, he's taking good care of me while I fight off the flu.  Its always a good time when toilet paper doubles as kleenex.  Here's my edits this week:

Original, SOOiPhone

 Did all the typical edits.  I tried to play with curves, but I need to spend more time learning how to actually do it.  The image has a lot of noise, but when I tried to reduce it, the spots of light all over the image were gone.  I chose to keep the noise and the spots of light because that's what I love about it. 

ABAW:6

I think my brain is turning to mush.  First, it took me two weeks to read this.  Second, every time I read the author's name, I thought "McGruber!"

I've learned that it takes me a long time to read a book I don't care for.  I typically devour them.  When I know that I don't like what I'm reading, I sometimes want to put them down and not finish them, but then they have statements like "New York Times Bestseller" emblazoned across them, and I think "maybe I just don't get it and I should keep trying."  Eh.

I don't have a lot of deep thinking to share but I did want to share this line:

"Screenwriters are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind."

One of the characters is an aspiring filmmaker.  He points out that movies shape our reality - not the other way around (we put popular ideas in films).  So, everything we think comes from movies.  The character goes so far to say "there is no authentic left."  Which is interesting, because when reading this book, I kept thinking about this.  Or, maybe I'm just cranky tonight.