photo ops

Ok, so I know that my voice here has been pretty quiet for a while, but there are a lot of wonderful things going on.  I almost feel like there is a creative night sky full of shooting stars in my heart, but I am keeping all of you looking on during a cloudy day.  Soon, hopefully the conditions will be perfect and I will be able to share my voice and passion more fully.  Thank you for waiting.  Please expect some glorious things.
In the meantime, if you peek through the clouds I have several awesome photography and artistic adventures from my year to share with you. 


A Grand Group of Photos

First, and many of you already know this, I posted my 1000th photo to daily perspective recently!  And yes, I chose to celebrate!  Are you kidding me?  That blog has been a beautiful challenge in my life.  I have learned and grown so much because of it and even though my posting frequency diminished over the past two years, hitting that 1000 mark was/is a huge deal.  I don't love every shot I have put out there, but the ones I do LOVE make it all worth it.  I will continue to post to daily perspective next year.  I don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but I will be there.  Also, after I hit the grand mark (bahaha so punny), I posted some of my personal faves if you feel like checking them out!

The Stratejoyful Project

Last year, I began work on a series of 120 photos for my wonderful friend Molly's creation called joy juice.  Joy juice is just one of many amazing things that she has to offer through her inspiring business, Stratejoy.  She wrote.  I took photos.  And then it all went out to fabulous peoples emails as inspiring and challenging journal prompts for a year over a variety of topics.  (find out more from the link!) We encouraged, created, struggled, procrastinated and worked through it together and just a couple months ago, we finished!  (well, we finished for now...more to come)  I learned SO MUCH from doing this...about my creative process, my holdups, my desire to please people and my ability.  I wish I could go back and give it more time and focus and make my photos even more amazing and on time, but I cant.  I can move forward and take what I've learned into new and fabulous things!!  Please do check out Stratejoy if you want your life to change!

Sharing My Candid Perspective

Recently, another one of my wonderful friends, Alyssa, asked me to be a guest blogger for her with some photography tips.  Alyssa and her husband Chris blog over at a beautiful place called The Kid Project where they are embracing their kids, adventure and all the passions in their lives all together rather than becoming complacent.  It is awesome and I urge you to check it out! Anyway, I was more than happy to oblige, but I didn't realize how much it would open my eyes!  As I sat down to write an article about photography tips, I was super intimidated (like shouldn't some professional photographer be writing this?), but I soon realized how freaking much I know about taking photos.  I suddenly remembered that I came to understand how a lens truly works as a kid, know how to shoot and develop film and have been out there clicking that shutter A LOT over the last several years (over my life really).  And so I wrote.  In fact, I had a hard time keeping the articles short.  For now, I wrote three posts of tips about taking photos you love, taking photos of kids and taking photos outdoors.  But the most important thing about writing all this was that my own tips and awareness of my knowledge challenged and inspired my own photographic and creative journey.   
I have the tools and ability to do so much more.

And so, I wake up right now at this point in my life with that newfound (rediscovered?) awareness and these three 'photo ops' captured.  Combine that with the 'unbroken' piece of art I made this year, a recent brainstorm and the creation (finally) of my new insanely meaningful personal accountability blog, my morning moxie, and this whole candid voice thing, which still stirs my heart on a daily basis, is starting to pick up some sparks of momentum!

Its exciting.  Its scary.  Its more impactful than you or I realize yet.
And its up to me.  It's up to me!  But the part of me that knows (and not just dreams and hopes) I can do it is finally awakening.