Reaching for the Sun

 "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." Anais Nin

Spring is here and I can actually feel the dynamic energy in the air, can't you? During this beautiful season, transformation is literally welling up from the ground and inviting us to start over, to renew and to bloom. I love the idea that just like sweet little buds, we can also reach out to the sun, make space for new life and unfurl all the dreams and projects that need to blossom in our lives.

Today, let's share some images that can help us manifest warmth, rebirth, transformation and light!

note: I believe you still have time to register for Picture Spring! Don't miss this chance to practice mindfulness and tune in to all the inspiration surrounding you this season. You can also view "picture spring" gallery updates here.

Experimenting

I don't know for how long I had been salivating over Polaroid images from fellow photographers and wondering what sorts of images I could shoot if only I had the guts to try it. But no, instead of playing and experimenting, I held back because I felt some sort of confinement within the type of photography I usually do: sharp, saturated, colorful. I did not want to get out of my style box so to speak.

Then just before my recent trip to Mexico, I had a moment of compulsion and ordered a refurbished SX70 and a few packs of TZ & 600 film from the Impossible Project shop. Gulp! A few hundreds of dollars later I was highly committed to at least try it out, even if I had to hide the results forever inside a trunk in the attic!

Little did I know that it would be so much fun! Not only did I gasp at each step of the analog process with child's delight, but I also fell in love with the results achieved by trying out the different types of film. For some of you old school photographers, this may be as trivial as rice and beans. But for a digital self taught girl like me, this experience was an exciting gourmet experience. And the results were fun to see, because despite the medium, I realized that my eyes still capture and frame things the same way, which was really reaffirming and heart warming for me.

This week, I encourage you to get out of your box. If you've been shooting with a zoom lens for too long, try a prime. If you have been shooting digital, try film. If you always do color, play with black and white. Let's challenge our brain and stretch those creative muscles!

What has been begging you to try new ways to experiment? If you have already been experimenting, show us what you've got, we'd love to see!

coconut

Coconut by Paul Hostovsky.

"Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it’s hard to get at but the thing is I wasn’t looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn’t happy I said to put it back because I didn’t want it because we didn’t need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got it home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it."

Happiness and its pursuit can be so abstract and somewhat of an illusion, so I really like the idea of trying to characterize how it manifests itself in our everyday life.

For me for instance, happiness was in how this poem inspired me and made me run out of the house this afternoon in search of coconuts, with my heart full of wonder. It was in finally finding a whole box of them hiding under the shelves of a little Mexican market. It was in catching myself sitting on the floor of the store taking pictures while other shoppers wondered what the heck I was doing. It was in coming home with two coconuts without knowing how I was going to get into them. It was in asking my husband for help, watching him google it, then seeing him come back with a screw driver and a hammer. It was in taking the time to do a silly spontaneous project like this, and it was in how the two of us found ourselves in our kitchen, at the end of an ordinary day, along with the coconuts, finally open.

Can you share with us any images of how you've captured tangible happiness around you?

newfound identity

"We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting." Kahlil Gibran

The other day, I was having a conversation with a photographer friend and she said to me: "I am a recorder. That is what I do. I document my life." That thought stayed with me and I began to wonder... Who am I as a photographer?

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

After going through all my photos in search of my identity, I came across the image above and I knew immediately: That's it. I am a photographer on a quest for beauty. Whether I am shooting a client, a model or my lunch, what drives me is beauty. Some days that beauty comes to me as a gift and on other days, I have to look a little closer, dig a little deeper, even stage it. But I never tire looking for it and it never fails me. No matter what, somehow beauty is always there to lift me up and teach me something about myself and the world.

Who are you as a photographer? Can you answer this question with a picture?

collective prayer

With the heartbreaking news from Haiti this week, I thought I'd invite the sisterhood to join me on a collective prayer.

Please post your images of candles, flowers, offerings and good wishes. I really believe in the power of community prayer and I hope that together, our intentions can bring some hope and relief to those who are displaced, hurt, experiencing fear, thirst and loss... 

Let's join forces and use our Photography to send love to the people of Haiti today.