Visualize your Photos Weekend Challenge

Courtney at Click it up a Notch sends out a weekly newsletter with a weekend challenge. This weekend she challenged us to visualize a photo and then make it happen. Well, we decorated our mantel this weekend for October...we covered it in spider webs with black spiders and spooky candles. Currently, I have three silhouette photos there also. I decided I wanted Halloween silhouettes of the kids for this month. I took them to the beach and here's what I came up with. Very cute and great for a Halloween mantel! They are not perfect so I might try again tonight. I have a few more ideas after looking at these. Thanks for the challenge Courtney!

Weekly Favorites

My intention for this blog is to make it a collection of my favorite photos and to learn from them who I am as an artist. Here are my favorites from this week, the last week of September.

My intention was to capture the contrast between the frilly skirt and the casual beach sand. Her sweet feet were a special bonus.

Like most photographers and mothers, I sometimes leave myself out of the story. The story was my aching stiff neck, but I loved the softness of the photo. And, I gave myself a little pat on the back for making it into a photo.

My aperture was too wide...I didnt' really realized that at the moment. I snapped because the moment was happening and I didn't want to miss it. I love it! Maybe her eyes could have been a little sharper, but I'm okay...actually in love...with the result.

I just love the color and composition of this photo, the lines.

I love this photo because I took it in the parking lot of an abandon restaurant in the middle of town. No kidding! I framed it just right and love that it makes me feel like we are in the middle of a field.

I wanted to capture the clouds, but not alone. I wanted to give them perspective and grounding. I liked the result.

Last favorite of the week...I wanted to capture the float of her skirt as she went back and forth. When I saw the photo on the computer what drew me in was my husband's hands reaching for her sweet feet.

September Favorite

Playing along with Click it up a Notch and her September Favorite Contest. I chose the following. I loved how the light was coming into my kitchen as I was dishing out some soup one evening. I grabbed my camera and this emerged. Lovely.

Top 5 Quarterly Favorites

It's that time again! Click it up a Notch is hosting a link up featuring everyone's top 5 photos of the quarter. Here they my favorites:

Lesson 1: Why I take photos

The first lesson in our creative journey is to think about why I take photographs. For me this is an easy question. I've thought about it a lot since I picked up the camera and it's only been refined with my 365 commitment.

First and foremost, I take photos to record memories. I treasure every moment of this life and want to remember it as it is. I want to remember how everyone I love looked. I want to remember what we wore, what we did, where we went and who we did things with. Basically, I want to capture our life and what was in it.

Next, I consider my photography a spiritual practice. It offers me perspective, focus and presence. It encourages me to see beauty even in times or places where it might not be immediately evident. Since starting my photographic journey, I no longer agree with the mass marketers as to what beauty is. I now see beauty much deeper than the skin. I see beauty in the moment, in the ordinary and in the mess. And in the beauty, I find gratitude; gratitude for life just as it is and just as it is not.

Lastly, I take photos as a creative outlet. It is the part of me I call "artist." The memory photos I take for me and my family. My artistic photos I take just for me. They are the photos that make my heart flutter. They take my breath away. My artistic photos meld my skill as a photographer with my photographic eye.

Training My Eye

I found a blog, Kat's Eye View. I loved the lessons and posts about photography composition, so I decided to take her class, Find Your Eye,

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The first lesson: create a photo journal. This is my photo journal. I'm excited to start the process of discovering my photographic eye, looking at things in my photography that makes my heart flutter. I'm excited by the process of revealing to my conscious mind what my heart already knows...who I am as an artist and a photographer. When I'm shooting I always know when I get "the shot" I intended to get. It's not always easy and I don't always know it until I see it, but when I see it, I know...does that make sense?

I start this process with two photos I just liked. I didn't post them on my 365 blog because the didn't really have anything to do with my life, but they do have a place in my photographic journey. And now they have a place of their own.

I love this photo. I love the contrast between the busy store front and the calm ocean and beach. It talks to me of consumerism verses freedom.

The light pouring in from the windows and that sweet face drew me in.