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Photo Friday: breaking the rules

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Naomi

I’m participating in a two-week course called Rule-Free Photography through Live it to the Full: Online Workshops and Destination Retreats for Navigating Through Life’s Transitions. It’s a fun little creative adventure that really takes about 5-10 minutes a day. The idea is to get out of our heads and into the experience of photography. Here are a few photos from this week’s class.

It’s been interesting to think about connecting with the experience of taking photos beyond just the finished product. It’s about the creative process, not necessarily about achieving perfection. Also, sometimes it’s best to learn by taking away all the “shoulds” or mental restrictions and just experiment and make beautiful mistakes.

I definitely think (for me) that photography is all about seeing, about noticing something and capturing it in a certain way. Of course I care about the final image but I most love the actual experience of having captured something specific and of seeing the world in that very moment.

I’ll share more revelations next Friday as the class wraps up. Feel free to share your views on what photography is for YOU. Have a great weekend!

Posted in Creativity, Mindfulness, Photo Friday, Photography | Tagged creativity, Lao Tzu, macrophotography, nature, Photography, Rule-Free Photography, vivienne mcmaster | 4 Comments

Playing with Photojojo iPhone lenses

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Naomi

I am absolutely giddy! I lost my little macro iPhone lens last week at a backyard birthday party. I always have it in my pocket, it must have fallen out when I took my phone out or something. Since I’d already been telling everyone I know how awesome it is and that I wished I’d just gone ahead and bought the entire set since it’s such a good deal, that’s exactly what I did. Check it out. The company is very humorous:

First let me tell you how fun even the ordering process is (and NO… even though I still believe they should be paying me for all this advertising, I’m receiving no $ from Photojojo). Right after I placed the order, I received a humorous e-mail about how I’ve “got this on-line shopping thing down pat.” Two days later, my lenses arrived and I couldn’t wait to play with them!

Where am I going to keep these lovely lenses? When I was shopping yesterday for my soon-to-be-born nephew (yay!), I saw a cute little case meant for a baby’s pacifier… that’d be a perfect way to keep them in my purse. You just never know when you’ll want to distort, enlarge, or macro-fy something. SOOOO happy to have my macro lens back! Our roses are budding and all our recently-planted seeds are sprouting in the backyard garden …

This is by no means intended to be a scientific comparison of all the lenses, but at least you can see what they do…

I have a feeling I’ll be taking a lot of fisheye images in the near future. So cool! The telephoto would have come in handy last weekend at SeaWorld.

Posted in Photography | Tagged Fisheye lens, iPhone, macrophotography, Photography, Photojojo, SeaWorld, Telephoto lens, Wide-angle lens | 7 Comments

Captured forever

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Naomi

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever . . . it remembers the little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” ~ Aaron Siskind

Posted in Photography, Quotations | Tagged Aaron Siskind, Photography | Leave a comment

That to-do list in my back pocket

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Naomi

I’ve decided to trick myself into slowing down. I learned the other day that if given half an hour to read a magazine, I will vacuum under my bed instead. Yes, I’m certifiably something! Anyway, if I think of reading as accomplishing something, as getting through this box of magazines, I think maybe I would actually do it. I can totally relax if given permission!

So I started with Oprah and I came across this great Martha Beck (love her!) article, “Take a Load Off,” from March (this year! I say that because I have a few Cooking Lights from 2006 around here somewhere) with some great advice.

“Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do? Then drop into full engagement with whatever you’re doing, and let the worry go.”

I was just telling a friend about my short-term and long-term to-do lists and was relieved to hear that it makes sense that I haven’t been able to accomplish so many things since my daughter entered stage right. So I’ve let myself off the hook on those things and will work on them once she (soon!!!) goes to school longer days (as in “more than two hours heaven help me I can barely get anything done”). So yes, I’ve got things to do, as do we all, and I can let them simmer on the back burner for a little while longer. Permission granted. 🙂

Posted in Mindfulness, Motherhood, Photography, Quotations | Tagged Martha Beck, O: The Oprah Magazine, oprah, slow down, Time management | 7 Comments

3am ramblings about time

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Naomi

In the quiet of the very early morning when the house and it’s inhabitants are dreaming, my thoughts unravel from their tethers and wander.

Unable to sleep due to an I-won’t make-it-through-the-day-without-it afternoon coffee, I feel the heaviness of my body but the liveliness of my mind.

I have already read an entire novel since I came to bed. I stare at a large poster on the bedroom wall of my daughter, her head tilted at a poetic angle, her gaze focused on something in the distance.

She is already full of half a year’s worth of experience since I captured that moment. I am struck by the unfairness of time.

These are the times I most want to hold close, and yet they are slipping away with daily errands, busy-ness, my own fatigue. I picture her a teenager, a college grad, a young working woman, a wife, a mother, an old woman. I am already nostalgic for her youth.

Yet here it is for the taking, down the hall in sweet slumber. Please allow me to be able to receive this joy, to stop pushing it away. How is it that I’m missing what I already have right here?

(Note: I wrote this a couple weeks ago when I was in quite a different place. I feel like I now am much more able to appreciate these fleeting days with my sweet girl. What a difference sleep makes on my perspective.)