Photography – Page 15 – Life In Limbo

Everyday Beauty: Week 2

January 18, 2013

Hi! So, please bear with me as I figure out my favourite format for these end-of-week photo posts! I like including photos from Instagram, but they’re small and not great quality so I think it’s better I keep them small in the post. But I also want to be able to share some of my other photos when I have them. This format is what I’ve come up with for this week, let’s see how it works out. Also: I’ll be posting these Friday, and they’ll show everything since the previous post. One of my nightmares last year was having to try and match up the week of Project 365 with the photos…this year I’m not stressing out about it.

We had our book club meeting on the same night as we made s’mores in my friend’s fireplace! Both were fun activities. Highlight was playing “Kiss Marry Kill” with all manner of celebrity examples, and listening to “Boyfriend” to the chagrin of most (but not all) of our friends. There was a double birthday party night (two birthdays and two parties) on Saturday, it was a lot of fun to see everyone and plan a surprise for both of our friends! We had a Girls night where we watched the new episode of Girls, had an intellectual discussion about it, then watched the Mindy Project, and did not have an intellectual discussion about it. All in all, it was very fun.

I’ve been doing a little yoga, drinking a lot of tea, experimenting with a couple of new recipes, and reading a lot – as much as I can! Of course, school is pretty busy, they’re really making me work for this last semester! So I’ve been doing a lot of readings and diligently going to my classes. The weekend ahead promises to be full of work (actual work, and schoolwork) so I’m going to try and put my head down and barrel through it.

Happy Weekend!

xo.

Project 365 Book

January 15, 2013

I’m so totally thrilled with how this little book turned out. All along, throughout the project, I had been hoping to print all my photos from Project 365 into a Blurb book and it was so fun to get the book yesterday and finally see them all in print. I was so excited about getting it I was tracking the package online every day and left a little note for the postman about which buzzer was mine (they never buzz, and then I have to trek out to the UPS store to get a package that could have just been delivered straight to me!).

Anyways, I love it. It is the visual record of my 2012. I intentionally printed the book with 8 photos per spread – partially because of cost, partially because I love being able to see about a week at a time. Also, as I’ve said repeatedly throughout the year re: this project – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Not every single photo is special. But together they are so special! And I love that I can remember things that were happening that day when I look at the photos. I made this 7×7 book using Blurb and I am very happy with the results.

Plus – guess what? I learned how to manually set my white balance when I took these photos this morning! So Project 365 (the learning, the growing, the improving) has come full circle and is going full steam ahead. Yay!

Everyday Beauty: Week One

January 11, 2013

One of my goals for January was to seek out the everyday beauty in my daily life. So far, it’s worked wonderfully, and I’ve had a great time doing it! I bought a new photo-editing app for my iPhone that I really like, and I’ve been having a great time tweaking my photos. The photos you see above were all taken by my iPhone, which is why, if you click on them the quality of the larger-size photo may not be very high. But using my phone lets me capture the more spontaneous moments more easily than my big camera would. In coming weeks, I’ll probably have a combination of pictures from both my camera and my phone.

These were all small, for the most part quiet (with the exception of the first one!) moments in my first week of 2013. So far, it’s been awesome! A lot of reading, a lot of cozy time indoors, a lot of eating. I hope it can continue like this for the rest of the year. ;)

Project 365: The End

January 10, 2013

The above picture is a mock-up of my Project 365 Blurb Book! I am anxiously awaiting its arrival, and I’ll post a few photos of it once it gets here. I had always intended to print my photos from 2012 into a book, and needless to say I cannot wait to flip through all the pages of photos from this past year. I didn’t quite make it to 365 (I lost about a week, somewhere or other) but you can see my Project 358 photos in their entirety here!

I’m really happy I chose to do this project. It’s true that my photography has improved by a lot from the beginning of the year to now, and I’m proud of that. At the same time, I have been relieved not to have to scrounge around my badly-lit apartment for a decent photo on days when I am feeling busy and uninspired. I’m conflicted about this! Part of me thinks that searching out beauty in the everyday is important (it’s one of my goals for January, after all!). The other part of me thinks that being creative shouldn’t feel like a total chore. I was starting to resent doing this project every single day. So I’m giving myself a little time to “detox” from the project, and giving myself permission to take photos that inspire me and make me happy, whenever that may be. I’ve also been using my iPhone to take photos much more, which I’ve enjoyed (it’s easier, and always with me). We will see how 2012 goes from here re: photography!