My Daughter’s Photography

Just wanted to share some photos that my girl has taken for her photography class at school.  I think she has a great eye for photography, and I’m pleased that she’s learning all the technical skills that I don’t have!!  There were different assignments for the photos, such as optical illusion, painting with light, night view, etc.  Her brothers and sister were sort-of cooperative models…and I tried to help out a bit, but my idea to take photos with sparklers on the basement stairs, well…great way to set off the fire alarm!!  (Hey, growing up in Guate we never set off any fire alarms with sparklers inside our *cement* houses!!) And this last photo is of me….nice and creepy!!! 🙂

A glimpse of home…

These hibiscus type flowers grew like weeds in our hedge…

Yesterday we visited the Devonian Gardens for the first time.  I wasn’t expecting a glimpse of my past!  It was our first visit to the Gardens and I was surprised to see so many plants and flowers that reminded me of my childhood.  I grew up in Guatemala City and our yard was always full of flowers and green leafy things!  Here are some of the plants that I was happy to recognize (though I can’t name them all!)

I have always loved bougainvillea of any color and you can see it everywhere in Guate!

I was so surprised to see this flower as I have never seen it outside of Guatemala before…it was in the butterfly greenhouse. Just 2 small branches of flowers…a taste of the masses of lilac blooms I remember…and I remembered exactly how the leaves would feel…like stiff sandpaper….

We had a small coffee bush growing in our yard, and I remember popping the red berries into my mouth to see what they taste like, not like coffee that’s for sure!!

These papyrus plants used to grow in our back yard and we would use them for pretend umbrellas when we were little….

Papayas!!

My Mom always had cacti around and we were always picking up spines in our feet and knocking into the prickly things!! (Ok, and even licking them! That was me…)

What a beautiful day we had!  After a long long cold cold winter, seeing the flowers and greenness was a site for sore tired eyes, that’s certain.  And the gurgling of a little stream….nice!   Ahhh, my tropical memories!

Photo a day challenge for the faint-hearted…

Have you heard of the photo-a-day challenge?  Maybe you have been doing it for years.  I must confess that I have never done it.  (I won’t confess that I just might possibly have started the challenge once upon a time…)

The idea is that you take at least one photo every day for a year….and then….and then…..

and then you do something with the 365 photos.

And there you go.

That Was Easy.

Doesn’t sound very challenging?

Well it was for me! (too challenging!)

Take a few seconds and think about it:

1) Finding your camera.

2) Finding something to photograph.

3) Finding light to photograph it in.

4) Taking the photo (and maybe a few extra, just to be sure).

5) Downloading the photo(s) onto your computer–for me and my little buddy laptop, this can easily take up to 35 minutes!

6)  Finding a place on your computer to store the photo.

7)  Deciding what you are going to do with the photo: print? digital album? facebook? flikr? instagram?

(skip steps 5 and 6 if your photo goes straight to your online media).

8)  Probably should be making up a caption to go with photo.

9) Repeating procedure every day.

10)  For a year.

So now that you are excited and just panting to get at this fun challenge, I just want to say….you are a bit late.  It’s already January 15th.  But better late than never!!  Right?  (you remembered that that’s my favorite motto and seems to be my saying for this new year)!   Don’t listen to any negativity….you can do it!!  Starting today!

I am going to give it a try  (I just decided that 4 days ago).  And why?

Because I personally know one person who did it.  She did it, for a whole year.  (of course she’s a super-organized type A type person, but that shouldn’t make any difference…should it?)  She posted her photos on her Flikr account and will soon print them out in a beautiful coffee table album.  Her photos were fabulous, I must say (and I tried not to feel photo-envy, or motivation-envy either).  And she encouraged me to try the photo-a-day challenge (several times).

And because it might make me want to hone my photographic skills and actually learn something about photography.

And because it might be a cool way of documenting a Year in the Life of Us.

And it’s because it’s only January, and I haven’t gotten too far behind yet.

And because I have no other cool ideas at the moment.

So I went to my digital programs and grabbed photos that I have taken from the last 15 days  (ok, some were tweaked a bit, but they were the kind of photos that I would have taken on that specific day if I had been thinking about this challenge).  And then I went into my digital scrapbooking program (all programs by Creative Memories of course) and made some simple layouts for a future wonderful coffee table book (that you will be forced to look at if you ever come and visit me–and if it ever gets done!). As I was setting up my future book, it seemed like a good idea to have one month cover a two page spread, so roughly 15 photos per page and 24 pages for the book.  Seems do-able.  After spending some time and thought (I won’t tell you how much), I came up with the layout for this first page! (didn’t take long to drop the photos in!)

I’m going for simple (which is totally unlike me, don’t know if I will be able to handle the sleek simplicity zenness or not)

And it just may be the very first and last page that you see from me!! 😉

But, really, I just want to encourage YOU to try this simple and fun challenge!!  If I can do it, anyone can!!  (oh wait, I should probably say that at the end of this year….)

If you search for the phrase “Photo A Day” online there are a whole bunch of fun-sounding ideas that pop up.  Like almost game-type contests and encouraging articles, ideas, all sorts of stuff that are way more motivational than my sorry post!!  I had forgotten, but there are also lists of ideas for each day of the month, to give you some inspiration for what to photograph. Here’s a link with an example of a list and links to the people who joined the challenge at a content housewife. That’s kind of what my friend did, though I think it was a topic for every week, such as self-portrait, motion, B&W, children, etc.  Really, you should try it and start today (just make up a few things for the last 15 days)! Let me know if you are going to try it out and maybe we could come up with a fun list of ideas!

P.S. I just found this site, which I haven’t seen before, called 365 project where they have it all set up for you, looks easy to do and inspiring…..(not that I’m really looking for inspiration…until I get desperate).

P.P.S.  I’m just going to put my photos on my book pages, I’m not on instagram or flikr, and don’t really plan to go there at this stage of my life….baby steps, baby steps….