It’s been an Instagram week of sunshine and baking, turquoise, spring green and yellow. Come and find me. I’m ‘mirrormirrorxx’.
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That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
Some favourite Instagram photos from last week. Come and find me, I’m ‘mirrormirrorxx’. (Going to try and do this every weekend).
As you can see it’s been a week of snow and soft pastel colours.
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We had a massive snowstorm in Seattle last week which meant that the Minx and I were both trapped at home. What with that and going away on a jolly with the Husband’s job last weekend, I’ve still trying to catch my tail after Christmas.
Normal, hopefully better than normal, blog service will resume tomorrow.
Instagram – My New Obsession
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Over the last few months a lot of people have asked me whether I was on Instagram or not.
I wasn’t because I couldn’t really see the point – I was already taking plenty of iPhone photos and sharing them on Twitter and Facebook and I didn’t really need to be on another social media time-sucking platform, did I?
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How wrong I was. As I mentioned before, one of this year’s resolutions was to try out Instagram, mostly because I thought it would be an easy way to do a ‘365 project’ and post a photo a day. On January 1st I posted one solitary photo from our New Year’s Day walk in Gasworks Park and thenceforth I have become gently obsessed. Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Follow some great photographers and you’ll have a constant stream of scrumptious eyecandy delivered direct to your phone. Take a photo with your phone (iPhones only at the moment unfortunately), or a upload a picture you took earlier, apply a suitably retro filter and then have it delivered to the Instagram network and also to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flick.
It’s been a great way to reconnect with blogger friends away from the noise of Twitter and Facebook and of finding new creative and imaginative people online as they go about their beautiful business.
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And it’s easy to produce lovely images. The camera on the new iPhone 4s is crazy good and the various photography apps and filters available (I’m using Camera+ and Picfx as well as the Instagram filters) make it fun to create all sorts of effects.
I’m enjoying the challenge of working within the iPhone’s limitations – wide-angle lens, tiny aperture, rubbish in low light, square format, not many pixels – and love the fact that the phone is usually to hand, when you see pretty lightshades at the opticians or a pile of soggy, but colourful leaves on a rainy trip to the dentist. It’s not a substitute for a fancy camera, but a very fabulous adjunct.
Already my Instagram feed is proving to be a cool visual journal of January 2012, and seeing all the photos grouped together has shown me that I do in fact have photographic style – colourful and graphic yet dreamy – which has never leapt out at me before.
Rest assured you’ll be seeing more Instagram photos on the blog in the days and weeks ahead (I’ll format them as Polaroids here so you can spot them).
And of course the whole network is riddled with cute pictures of cats.
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Are you on Instagram? What do you like about it? Which apps do you use? What’s your username so I can follow you? I am mirrormirrorxx.
New Year, New Photography Me
I got a Christmas present that made me so happy it brought tears to my eyes, I’ve wanted one for so long.
As a weight-loss incentive the Husband said he would buy me a Canon 5D Mk II and this Christmas, since I am so close to goal weight (or I was before Christmas), he decided to put it under the tree for me.
This baby is fabulous and terrifying in equal measure – it has pixels and ISOs and features a go go and can produce some ridiculously amazing images. Most of the professional photographers I speak to use it and love it, so I now no longer have any excuse not to produce top quality images.
And therein lies the rub. I no longer have any excuse. Before I could blame crappy images on my not so stellar camera, but now the only reason not to produce amazing photos is because I’m not a good enough photographer.
Because I have to admit to myself that I am a photographer, albeit not yet a very good one. There is nothing, apart from maybe knitting, that gives me so much pleasure and satisfaction – how with the press of a single button, you can tell a story, capture a mood, transmit an emotion, or, as is too often the case with my photos, convey absolutely nothing at all.
So this is the year when I start to take this craft seriously – when I upgrade my kit, study hard, practise tons and put myself out there. I still have no idea where, if anywhere, it all might lead, but I’m going to bust my ass getting there.
To kick things off I’m going to finish up my Christmas photo book, have signed up for an online Food Photography course with Lara Ferroni, am committing to posting at least a photo a day to Instagram (I’m @mirrormirrorxx come and join me), will read the stack of photography books next to my bed, will start using Flickr again and build a photography portfolio website. One day I want to be worthy of my new toy, in a way that I’m just not at present.
This year I’m only making positive resolutions, no more thoughts of ‘giving up’ or ‘losing’, or ‘stopping’. Instead I want to do things that help me grow and develop, take me to new places and bring me new opportunities. I want to throw a metaphorical stone into a metaphorical lake and watch where the metaphorical ripples end up, and am super intrigued and excited to find out where this photo journey might take me.
Are you starting any new journeys this year? Where do you hope to get to? What do you want to learn or achieve? Spill the beans and we can hold each others’ hand along the way.
I was just about to press ‘publish’ when this post by Tara Austen Weaver popped up on Facebook. Of course she talks about following through on all things intriguing so much more eloquently than I can. I think she must have been reading my mind.
Picture the Holidays–The View from Here
Our next prompt was to remind us to take a few moments to enjoy the view.
This is the view I have from my desk in a corner of my bedroom as I work. The chair is my knitting chair. We had some lovely sunny days in Seattle last week so I decided to render this in black and white to emphasise the beautiful wintry light.
This is the view you get from that chair.
Picturing the Holidays – You Hold the Key
For this prompt I had to photograph something that helps me to slow down, take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.
And it will come as no surprise to any of you that I chose knitting as my thing. I love the satisfaction of seeing the puzzle of stitches work itself out on my needles, of watching yarn forwards and knit togethers line up where they’re supposed to as a pattern slowly emerges before my eyes.
And then when the puzzle is figured out, it becomes a meditation. Each stitch pattern ebbs and flows in its own rhythms and my mind ebbs and flows with it. And if you take things one little stitch at a time; if you rip back, correct your mistakes and press on; if you’re patient and persevering and just keep going, however daunting a project might seem; one day you will be able to look back on your work and see that you have created something beautiful.
Picture the Holidays – All You Need is Love
I think this one’s pretty much self-explanatory. Not exactly creative, but I couldn’t pass this one up.
Picture the Holidays – Reframing the Season
Our next prompt was to ‘Reframe the Season’.
The hint talked about using a literal frame and focusing about what we put it in, but I couldn’t think of what to do with it.
Then I glanced out of my window and saw the December garden in all its mellow wistfulness. It seems to me that this season is one that we very much experience through the window frame, rather than being out and in the thick of it.
Picture the Holidays – Holding on to Gratitude
This December I’ve decided to try my hand at putting together a ‘Picture the Holidays’ photo prompt book put together by Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters via Paper Coterie.
Every day I am emailed a photo prompt to inspire me to take a photo, which I then upload into a photobook on the Paper Coterie site, which I can then have printed if I wish. I know I’m crap at following through on these sorts of projects, but a month of photos seems just about manageable.
Yesterday’s prompt was entitled ‘Holding On To Gratitude’, encouraging us to think about what we’re grateful for. Funnily enough the night before I had gone to sleep thinking particularly grateful thoughts as I’d been reading a thread on Ravelry where people had been asking for good wishes and prayers because they were going through some particularly horrible things in their lives. I know I am insanely lucky in so many ways.
Unfortunately, the things I am most truly grateful for – my health; my bright, beautiful, healthy daughter; my lovely husband and his lovely job; my wonderful friends; even my fabulous blog friends, were either too abstract, or too absent at school or work to be photographed yesterday.
Instead I hit up on something rather random. When you’re doing the Dukan diet you do become incredibly grateful for that morning cup of joe, which is permitted – oh joy! – if made with non-fat milk. This photo for me sums up the warmth and comfort of home; reminds me how lucky I am to be able to afford a fancy coffee machine to make fancy coffee in a fancy mug; makes me think of my husband, and of Seattle, where I’m so lucky to be able to live. And in a literal interpretation of ‘hold on’ I like that this pictures is full of handles. Oh well, it made sense to me.
What would you photograph given that prompt?
In a spectacular photography fail yesterday, I took my camera out last night to see the Christmas Ships without its SD card. So you’ll just have to image the fabulous pictures I would have taken of my daughter’s shining face as she gazed at the lit-up boats, next to blazing bonfires, against the sparkling backdrop of downtown and the Space Needle. They might have been a little more appropriate for the above challenge too. Grrrrrr.
Oh and Dine & Dish is doing this too, go to her blog for a different perspective on things.
Advent Calendars
It’s the first of December so we’re allowed to start talking Christmas (or ‘the holidays’ if you prefer).
The Minx’s advent tree, which is yearly supplied with small treats by one of the Minx’s godmothers, will go up tonight and I thought it might be fun to round up some other advent type things I’ve come across in the last few days.
One of the Minx’s other godmothers (yep, we did a good job picking those) has sent her a link to this gorgeous-looking online advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson featuring Christmassy London scenes. I don’t seem to be able to share the demo, but do click on it, it’s really charming. I don’t care about the Minx, I’m excited enough to start open the first link when she comes home from school tonight.
Also tonight, we’re off to see the Christmas Ships as they set off on their nightly December odyssey round Seattle’s waterways. Rain has always conspired to stop us seeing them before, but it looks like it will be OK tonight. Hopefully pictures tomorrow.
The Daily Suze found two beautiful, more grown-up, advent calendars.
This from the White Company (how I miss that shop). I love this idea of having a tasteful tree decoration for every day and transferring them one by one from the calendar to the tree. Maybe when we get back to having tasteful trees again we’ll do this.
This calendar is also minimalist and lovely, and even I wouldn’t have trouble making it. It could be made to fit into any décor too, if you changed the colour of the boxes. I still don’t quite see the Minx appreciating it yet though.
If you want an advent calendar for yourself go along to Paper Coterie where they are doing a project called ‘Picture the Holidays’. Every day you will be emailed a prompt to take a photograph and at the end you will get the chance to put all your gorgeous images together into a photo book. Facebook friends who have done one Paper Coteries’s Prompt Me projects before have said that it’s very fun, so I’ve decided to sign up. Let’s see how it goes. I’ll put more details up in dedicated posts as the month progresses.
Finally, if you’re into shopping rather than photography, Abigail*Ryan, purveyors of beautiful homewares, are doing a 12 Days of Christmas Sale. Search for the snowflakes on one of their gorgeous handprinted teatowels or cushions and get it on sale for one day only. And if anyone wants to buy me one of their teatowel gift boxes, please feel free.
