hellooo...

i am hoping august is the month.

i've been on hold, waiting and wondering.  testing the waters occasionally but each little step forward proved to be a no-go.

the deal is that i am trying to emerge from an overdose... a photographic/deadline/hell-hole of my own making.

it appears that the photography chairman's award contest at work, combined with photo hunt word of the day on facebook, and texture tuesday, and beyond layers, and my own projects such as self portrait every day, put me over the acceptable levels of photography projects with due dates and/or deadlines.

i don't know exactly what happened, or even when it happened, but i lost the light for a bit over these past few months. 

i haven't figured out exactly how to go forward.  i miss posting stuff. i keep shooting and trying new stuff, with cameras and software etc.  but i am not sure i can trust myself to know my own boundaries yet.  i resist posting - on blogs, facebook, flickr, instagram - because i tend towards the all-or-nothing kind of mindset.

so i am letting go of a few things, lightening up on some others and looking for a better balance.  i need some down time.

work is and has always been way too intense.  part of the lure of the photographic/deadline/hell-hole of my own making that i found myself in was an attempt to balance out the insanity of work with intensity of play.  and that actually worked for a couple of years, adding a whole lot of happiness to my life.  and then something went wrong.

work is still way too crazy.  i am working hard at letting go of some of that 'crazy' because i recognize that lots of that is self inflicted too, and there is a way to work smarter, not harder. (and truthfully, if my little plan for that doesn't work, at least i will get the '...not harder' part of the deal. which at this point, is good enough for me).

the play, on the other hand, is still a bit of mystery. not sure yet how to recognize 'too much.'
so i start with a post here, a finished assignment there and hope it feeds me that right amount of inspiration to bring me back from the edge of crazy.

awwww little blog, and little world of shooting-every-minute-all-for-the-fun-of-it, how i have missed you!! 

yes, august just might be the month :)

taking pictures...

in march 2010, i started a picture project with my sister where each day i picked a word for us to photograph that day. i thought we'd do it for a few weeks and then move on to something new.  i ended up photographing a word-of-the-day for a year. i posted the word on facebook in the morning, shot the pics throughout the day and posted the images on facebook at the end of the day.

it changed my life.

i've been a photographer since i was a teenager - that's about 40 years now. i started getting paid for it in my twenties, in retail portraiture and have done that for over thirty years. but i don't think i thought of myself as a 'photographer' until i did my photo hunt word of the day.

i always thought of myself as a visual person. but i saw the entire world with new eyes. every day. 

if i drove the same roads day after day,

i saw different things because there was a different word-of-the-day.

i grew as a photographer and it felt like i learned new things daily.

 

many facebook friends joined in, well over 100 people joined the photo hunt page.

we supported each other, kept ourselves going and had a ball.

then it ended.

i was lost for a while.

i think i wandered for a year, growing, but nowhere near as much as i had with the daily quest to take a good picture. in that wandering year, i followed different blogs and was fascinated by the amount of sharing that was happening online. it was a whole new world and i was addicted.

one blog leads to another and i spent hours following them all.

i was inspired!

but i wasn't shooting as much. i was bored with the same places, tired of photographing birds and squirrels, flowers and sunsets. i didn't know what to do to get back the joy that i'd found in the word-of-the-day.

finally, i signed on for kim klassen's 'beyond layers' online class. 

it has been a blessing.

i am learning so much about photoshop, which has been great fun.

but i'm also learning things photographically and that has been fantastic. 

and this week, the challenge involved a color of the day. 

omg, i felt like me again. 

 

go green :) on monday

tuesday's mellow yellow...

 pretty in pink on wednesday...

thursday is blue day :)

 

and coincidentally, the facebook photo hunt group came back to life this week too!

we had a word of the day again. and it was making me see things again. i was actually overwhelmed with it all, and didn't get to post all the assignments.

but i shot them :)

it was great to be inspired AND then to do something with the inspiration!

thank you, kim klassen and xanthe

and all the photo hunt friends! 

tuesday - window

wednesday - peace

 

thursday - spring

today's word is RED -

both the color of the day and the word of the day.

i am looking forward to a day of SEEING RED...

in a good way :)

 

six word memoir

this week's assignment in Beyond Layers class is to write your 6 word memoir. 

 i believe it's gonna take more than 6 words but the first thing that came to mind was...

the truth is,

i find i look for outside approval more than i should.

my whole life i have tried to curb the impulse to check with others,

my first instinct is to look to them for reassurance...

but as i get older,

 i am learning to measure my growth against me.

not others. 

so when i ultimately grow up,

i grow into ME...

my mother was my first measuring stick.  especially when it came to anything artistic or creative. 

she was my biggest cheerleader, to the point that no piece of artwork or craft item was complete until she oooh'd and aaah'd over it.  she nurtured creativity in a big way.

at work, i look to my boss for the same reassurance, and cheerleading. 

 i always have. 

and when that support is there, i flourish.  when its not, i flounder.

over the years, i came to realize it is a weakness.   i want to be more sure of myself.  

but more than that, i want to develop my own voice, my own vision. 

so i have put myself out there, with my best attempts, knowing the biggest stretch for me is in the reveal.  and the goal, for me, is to watch myself grow.

 i may be a small tree out there among the taller trees, but i am out there. 

 and i am growing :)

picture enhanced with kim klassen's textures - providence and not-too-shabby

six word memoir   www.smithmag.net/