Photo-Heart Connection, journal love, and Weekly Photo Challenge

This is a catch-all post for three different fun projects: the Photo-Heart Connection, some journal photos that a group of friends and I are all posting and sharing, and the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.  I hope it doesn’t get too long!

My choice for the Photo-Heart Connection for July was tough… on the return flight home from Chicago last week, I took many photos of clouds from my little window seat.  There were so many different types and colors all layered together and I thought it looked magical.  The one below looked sort of like a little tunnel from a stormy situation into brightness.  Then I got to my car and was exiting the parking lot and saw the one immediately below, with a lovely rim light giving special contrast to the separation of the grey clouds and the bright blue sky.  And I drove through those storm clouds and rain toward sunshine where I got to reunite with my sweet girl.

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“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.” ~ Christina Baldwin

Some friends are doing a party this week of pictures of our journals… we were chatting in our Facebook group about being obsessed with them.  I learned I’m not alone in admiring them, buying them, and then not wanting to sully them with my scribblings.  This could probably be a post in and of itself, but I already have next week’s posts scheduled so we’ll just include it here.  

There’s just a sense of promise, of beginning, of possibility with a brand new and beautifully covered book, don’t you think?

All these pretty covers and yet I began by using boring spiral notebooks…

 I have several travel journals where I pasted ticket stubs, brochures, cards, etc. and wrote about all the inspiration I was seeing around me.  I even found an old Lira note.

I’m sure you all have a journal or two, right? If you like, share how you use them (or not) and what they mean to you.

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The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is PURPLE.  Well, by the time you read this, I’ll probably be behind again, but here ya go…

My favorite color!

 

Whew! Have a lovely weekend, friends.  Come back on Monday for a post I’m excited to share with you about how a tiny shift in persecutive can change absolutely everything!

An announcement and a photo-heart connection: beauty is God’s handwriting

I am celebrating a private accomplishment today.  As Tracey Clark said on her blog recently, “it’s time we celebrate who we are, where we’ve been and where we are going and all the awesomely brave things we do along the way.” I can hardly believe that my little blog started a year and a half ago hit 100 followers last week. Talk about taking a risk to put myself out there! That people would like to see my photography and read my thoughts baffles me still.  But I am giddily jumping for joy and mentally doing cartwheels in celebration of this accomplishment. I am proud that I began, even though I wasn’t sure where it was going.  I am proud of sharing my photography, dreams, and motherhood struggles.  I am proud that I thought enough of myself to put myself out there… and I am rewarded with so many new friends… YOU!

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t, it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.  ~Barack Obama

It’s time for the June Photo-Heart Connection! When I looked through the photos I took in June, this one stood out for me.  I snapped it for a Picture Black and White class prompt, but desaturating this of color sort of ruined it for me. 

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The heart and soul connection here for me is that I did not ever notice that this “weed” was so colorful until I visited it with my iPhone macro lens.  In looking at the photo on my computer, I was taken aback at it’s texture, rich color, and delicacy.  Quite a revelation… photography does that for me.  I didn’t see the beauty right before me until I had my lens there to translate it for me.  This happens so often that you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I still pause in wonder every time.

I am currently participating in Liz Lamoreux’s Inner Excavate-along, and part of one of our prompts recently was to capture the world around us with our cameras, seeking patterns and nuances in how we see things every day.  I was immediately drawn to the words “you already know” in her prompt.  There is so much intuition within me when I’m holding my camera. 

Haven’t done it before? You can learn more about how to find your Photo-Heart Connection here.

See my May photo-heart connection post here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Close

The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is CLOSE.

Close. It’s a feeling, it’s a proximity…it’s people, it’s a place, it’s objects. They’re close. 

“they do not kiss
but they both want to
instead their feet touch and so do their arms
it is electric magic
their tiny arm hairs tingling
happily lying together
the sun warming them
watching sky through green-leafed gum branch
close enough to hear each other breathe
sweet togetherness
this lazy lying down dance of love” 
― Brigid Lowry, Guitar Highway Rose

What comes to mind for you?

Photo Friday: May flower challenge

Linking up today to my friend Lori at Lori Moon Studio and her photo a day challenge.

Photo Friday: various nature photos

I took this one from inside my car on a rainy day, waiting to pick up my daughter at preschool.

One aspect of photography, probably the one that speaks to me the most, is that it helps me see the world around me with a slightly different perspective.  Oftentimes, instead of seeing a mess, I see my daughter’s very frequent (as in multiple times a day) play with sand and water to be a beautiful childhood experience for her.  I have a lot of photos of her face in intent concentration, “working” on another magnificent concoction.

Thank you all for your encouraging comments.   I love and treasure each one.  Enjoy your Friday and have a great weekend.

I love how a water drop can simulate a magnifying glass. I also love the dreamy bokeh in the background.

An accidental little flare that I love. And again that background.

My favorite of the four here (you know I have lots more)

Lillies from my parents' garden (fisheye iPhone lens)

LOVE that there's a world inside that tiny drop.

Emerson quote and flower

Photo Friday: garden update

  

I just LOVE watching these flowers bloom! My backyard blooms practically change by the hour it seems.  Our daylillies are just starting to open up too.

You know, I always took gerber daisies for granted.  They seemed so plain to me.  Not that I see them in each stage of their life, I am amazed.

 

 

Still a work in progress.  I had to add a couple more shelves because they didn’t all fit on the shelf I painted once I took out two of the shelves.  I lined the shelves with a clear plastic drawer liner so I can actually water them now (lost a couple already).  I am still shopping for little doodads to embellish the space.  Pretty soon I’m going to figure out how to hang these pretty decorative wire flowers on the brick wall behind the shelves.  They’ve been sitting out there for several months now just waiting for the right drill bit, poor things.

  

  

Prescription for a Monday

Backyard Gerber Daisy unfolding with Kim Klassen texture “Simply Inspired.”

I hope you had a lovely weekend.  We had a perfectly relaxing Friday afternoon but then were quite busy with what felt like non-stop activity the rest of the weekend: an Earth Day “spring fling” at our nature center, a birthday party, a volunteer project, a gymnastics class, and various errands.  It’s enough to make anyone tired.  Aren’t weekends supposed to be restorative?   Add in our 3-year-old needing 3 hours to finally fall asleep one night and then waking up multiple times and I need a nap!

I’ve decided to post three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) for now.  I would like my posts to get a little more mileage before they are replaced with another in the #1 spot.  Hope you don’t mind.  I am loving reading all your comments and this will give me more time to respond too.

Have a good Monday, friends.

 

Raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens

OK, I admit it. I included this one just so I could use that post title!

I have enjoyed the time I’ve spent selecting plants at our garden center and getting them in the ground in our backyard.  My daughter loves to play with the water hose, so that gives me lots of time to capture images of our new Gerber Daises and Knock Out Roses with water drops on them.

I’m beyond happy to have my iPhone macro lens back!

Hope you enjoy…

Photo Friday: breaking the rules

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!