Today is supposed to be a snow day, but yesterday felt like one. My husband caught the flu but acted as though he had contracted the plague, thus making it near impossible to work my regular 12-15 hour day (I have mentioned how I treat myself like an indentured servant, no?) My husband’s took full advantage of having a wife/nurse maid. Every time I sat down at my desk chair I heard my husband cry from downstairs, “Hon, can you come down here for a sec?” So I would dutifully run down for something miniscule like ice cubes in his Gatorade or to bus his bowl of soup or larger requests such as running to the store (which is a good 20 minutes away). It went on like this for hours, until I finally raised the white flag of surrender and stopped working for the day. It was hard. We watched one boring documentary after another (I allowed him to choose which I never do), and I sat quietly and dreamt of florist extraordinaire Amy Merrick’s studio space. I think after you see these amazing shots from brilliant photographer Jennifer Causey you will have a case of studio envy too. I love working from home, but I do sometimes dream of commuting to a beautiful + inspiring space.  Amy’s is so full of texture, beautiful light and character that I find myself wistful for something just like it one day.

Photo by Jennifer Causy

I have made it to week 3!  Not much of an accomplishment if you are thinking, ‘it’s only one photo a week Miss B. ‘. True, it’s only one, but it’s amazing how even one, becomes a mind numbingly difficult task in my hands.  I have been shooting all week, here and there, but what I was anxiously anticipating  was a snow day.  The news reports this week would have you believing that we were in for a storm that would blanket my world with layers of beautiful, fluffy white snow vistas. I could barely sleep the night before said storm was supposed to land, making a mental checklist of the types of photographs I was going to create.  I awoke early the next morning to find the world outside looking less winter wonderland and more apocalyptic. I don’t have much experience with snow, so I was unprepared for snow that ‘doesn’t stick’, meaning it lands in clumps and then melts leaving your yard and the surrounding areas messy, squishy mud piles of gook.  I went from blissfully inspired to freaking out about walking my two white dogs through this mire. I have become pretty adept at working with the light I have instead of ruing it, but I have to be honest these moody shots are bringing me down.  I am not embracing the dark & mysterious, in fact I am resenting it.  I like the storm shots, they feel modern and abstract, but really there’s only so many I can take, right?  When I was in a photo rut before I would shoot florals and I felt very inspired doing so, but flowers are hard to come by where I am. The only flowers I can get at the store are ugly mixed bouquets of tight mass manufactured roses mixed in with the saddest daisies this side of the Mississippi. Farmer’s markets are no better, I missed out on Peony, Ranunculus and Tulip  season.  I honestly did not know that flowers would be an issue here, I thought that if I went to a Farmers market I would be able to get the flowers I wanted, I was wrong.   I am not going to stop my 52 because of a little light or subject issues, but I am going to have to try even harder to produce something that happy with. I did win a much coveted film camera in an online auction, I still can’t believe I got it for under $30! It’s worth a lot more, so I am hoping it works and I can explore more film with this project.  The two images that I developed with my last roll of film are amongst my favorite to date.  What about you?  Are you doing a photo project?  Are you struggling with what to shoot? Have you been exploring film or want to?

I have made it to week two of my photo project!  It was easy this week, because the world was so photogenic.  We had a strange heat front that came into town and made our little nestle of woods rife with fog + moodiness. I absolutely love it when it’s foggy, it makes every image feel dreamy and otherworldly.  This shot was taken at the beginning of my neighbors woods, a word that I only had a vague idea of what it meant prior to living here.  I remember being on the phone with my friend early into our move and telling her that we found a house right next to a ‘little forest’, and she responded, ‘you mean the woods?’.  Yes, that is what I meant, but didn’t know it when the previous descriptive plopped out of my mouth. All the formerly lush trees have lost their leaves and are just skeleton branches now, which makes for a nice winter eeriness. It was nice to have an ‘assignment’ and deadline to shoot, I work well with both and it had me motivated to shoot all week.  It’s not too late to join us on Flickr and upload your photos each week, it’s very casual, just get your photo up each week or edit a photo that you shot previously that is just sitting on your hard drive collecting virtual cobwebs. Are any of you doing a photo project?  Let me know I will come visit!

It is 2013, a new year and for many photo enthusiasts (like myself) an opportunity to take on the Herculean task of a photo project.  I have for two years running tried to edit a photo a day as my photo project.  If any of you were witness to this experiment you can attest that a lot (okay, all) of my original images were mediocre at best, but after hours in front of my computer they had an almost alchemic transformation.  I was able to turn rubbish into pure gold, it was delightful and embarrassing. Who wants to show off their worse photographs? I lasted longer the second try/year then the first, but it monopolized too much of my precious time and I had to cry ‘uncle’ at around month three.  This year I actually spent a month or two prior to the end of the year debating what I would do for this year’s photo project and how I would be able to achieve a modicum of success, perhaps even finish what I started. None of my grand ideas resonated with me, it all seemed so contrived and I shirk from anything that seems inauthentic. I wondered if I should even attempt it again, would I just be sentencing myself to a sort of Sisyphusism, rolling the metaphorical boulder of creative responsibility on weary shoulders up hill, only to see it descend down hill again– ad naseum?  Then I decided to stop talking to myself, because when I do that it just seems to lead me into an anxious abyss, because really who cares?  It’s a self-imposed photo challenge gosh darn it! It’s created to help me improve my photographs, if I shoot even one photograph for the whole project it is one photo more than I took previously thus by nature making me a better photographer by just practicing.  I  always make everything so much more complicated than it ever needs to be; I am good like that.  On New Year’s morning my light bulb moment happened and I decided on my ‘theme’ for my Project MMXIII.  Firstly, I decided on a 52 week instead of a 365.  I know myself too well to know that I wouldn’t be happy just shooting an image each day, I would want to edit it as well (to the nth degree) and doing this every.single.day would not be realistic. The theme I am choosing is nature, because it’s what I have an affinity for (good idea when choosing your personal theme), but I wanted it to be more creative and not too literal.  I am going to focus on abstract images in nature, think Mother Nature’s modern art if you will. I am going to be looking for shapes, colors, light & shadow. I want to find the unusual in the usual.  These first photos above had a Katazome (Japanese kimono stencil) feel, which although that technique is centuries old it feels very relevant for the 21st century, both modern + clean . I am a minimalist, but Mother Nature is not, so I am not only going to be a photographer but a curator and a sleuth. I may not always go with the linear, I may delve into the soft and dreamy, I want to have a malleable ‘map’, that allows me to explore other avenues, but still gets me to my ultimate destination (in this case the 52 finish line).  What I am hoping to accomplish is to become a better photographer, to challenge myself to see past the need to take the “perfect” photo (I am always lamenting that I don’t have the ‘right’ people, places or things to photograph) and just get into the moment (gosh, that sounds so new age-y).  I am not an ‘in the moment’ sort of person, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking (read stressing) about the future and begrudging my past decisions. This is going to be quite the challenge for me.   If you would like to join me on this adventure I am going to have a group on Flickr, you can do the same project as I am or choose a theme that you feel resonates with you.  I will be uploading my results once a week both here and in the group and if applicable sharing my process (I love to share what I have learned). I hope you join me and I can last longer than 3 months!  Join me here!

P.S. I know a lot of you have accomplished 365′s any advice to someone has failed multiple times?

P.P.S. These are not black & white photographs, I shot them on an overcast day which made it easy to ‘blow out the sky’ and create these deep dark colors on my subject.