weekending by Christine Young

Christine Young shoots images like this with her Nikon CoolpixP100 and spends her weekends hiking with her dog and camera … treasure hunting for new ways of seeing and being.

You can find her on her website Christine Create. 

What are you seeking out this weekend?

Todays prompt: embrace

Sundays prompt : something black

something red

People often ask me if Elevate the Everyday is about photography and I can only answer this; yes and no. Yes, it's about how to use the creative tool of photography to focus on the little things that matter most but no because even before photography there's the art of observation. And I feel like that kind of observing or perhaps better said, seeing, is even more important than the photography itself. Without the seeing, what could we possibly be shooting?

Dorthea Lange said, The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Eureka!

What is it that we do each and every day with our cameras? We see. When we are compelled to hold up our camera to our eye, it's because we have seen something that moved us in such a way that we just had capture it. And when we put our cameras down, we still see. The beauty, the wonder, the awesome, the everyday, elevated.

Over the years I've realized that my photography has heightened my way of seeing. Everything to me is photo worthy now. But, it's been a slow evolution, this honing of my vision. But, the best part is, the more I am open to it, the more I see and the more magic appears. This is exactly what elevating the everyday means; capturing that magic in a photograph. Something tells me, you can relate.

As you are open to all that your everyday life has to offer, watch for the magic. Today's prompt is Something Red. My guess is that it will show up everywhere. Please share what red you find with us here in the comments. Be sure to tag all of your images you share through your social media platforms #sselevate.

And check out our partner in elevating the everyday this month, Paper Coterie. They've got all kinds of magic happening over there, like a giveaway(of a camera-eeep!) and fun, free printables from some of my favorite peopleall month long. YAY!

a shimmer of silver

This past weekend, Bryce's girlfriend graduated. She looked so beautiful. Every little detail just right. Silver shimmering in her hair, lovely silver and jewel accessories and the prettiest sequins on her dress. Perfectly perfect.

I adore silver. I'm always thrilled when I find a new silver ring or an inspiring silver charm. Love so much.

How 'bout you? Share your silver sprinkled photos in the OWP Flickr group, tag them with #sscolormonth and you will be entered to win a beautiful Epiphanie camera bag at the end of this month. 

carnation pink

We are tickled pink to be sharing this excerpt from Susannah Conway's new book, This I Know: Notes on Unravelling the Heart.

Words and images have always been the currency of my creative life, but it was years before I could stand up and say, Yes, I am a writer, Yes, I am a photographer, as if I had to achieve a certain level of success before I earned the right to call myself either. When I say I am a writer I mean I use words to convey the truth in my heart. When I say I am a photographer I mean I use cameras to record and interpret the world around me. Of my two passions it’s my photography skills I feel most confident about. For as long as I can remember I have “seen” photos wherever I go, noticing small details, colors, the lines and shapes that marry so well in a flat image. I notice how branches scratch across a blue sky; how the space between the cushions looks so soft and safe. There’s a list in my head of my must-take shots, and I can’t walk past a construction site without snapping the side of a rusty truck, a constellation of colors found in deceptively mundane places. My eyes don’t judge what they see—there’s no hierarchy of beauty when everything piques your interest. 

For a time I thought that being a real photographer meant I needed to join associations and offer my hourly services to paying clients. So I tried it for a year, making postcards and advertisements, networking with the mothers at local schools, photographing christenings and birthday parties and families on the beach. And there were moments of real fulfillment—when clients loved their portraits and called to thank me, when I felt I’d captured something truthful in a family group—but the work drained me more than any job I’ve ever had, my introverted self, exhausted by having to be “on” all the time. I’d turned my passion into a job, trying to fit into a mold that wasn’t designed for me. So I spent less and less time on the marketing, until the phone stopped ringing and I recycled the postcards. Although it felt like a failure, I couldn’t ignore the relief.

Photography is more accessible than perhaps it’s ever been, with camera phones and social media feeding an unending stream of images into the ether. While potentially we’re all photographers now, in truth it’s never as simple as owning a camera. For me, a photographer is a person who expresses themselves using the photographic medium. They don’t have to sell their images, or have clients or commissions—they are simply compelled to translate what they see and feel into a photograph. Most forms of creative expression require specific tools, but if you were to take away the paintbrushes and the cameras, the loom, the guitar and the stage, you’d be left with a bunch of people who are compelled to act on their creative impulses. 

You are left with artists. 

I believe we are all artists at our core, all of us endlessly creative, using our lives as canvases, our imaginations as tools. Children are born artists, seeing the potential in every cardboard box and dried leaf, remaking their world as fast as they discover it. We don’t lose that innate creativity, but many of us repress it, weighed down by all the grown-up responsibility adulthood brings. But with a camera, a pencil, a ball of yarn, we can make something out of nothing; dinner served with a flourish, a bed made with vintage linens, a garden border planted with red tulips. We simply need to open our eyes and put some thought into the details. We are the curators of our lives—we decide what they look like.

Susannah Conway is the author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart (SKIRT!, June 2012). A photographer, writer and e-course creator, her classes have been enjoyed by thousands of people from around the world. Co-author of Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids (Chronicle Books, 2012), Susannah helps others reconnect to their true selves, using photography as the key to open the door. You can read more about her shenanigans on her blog at SusannahConway.com and connect with her on Twitter: @SusannahConway.

Share with us some carnation pink details from your world today as we continue to celebrate color month! When you leave your comment here between now and Wed midnight EST, you'll be enetered to win a copy of Susannah's book This I Know.  

rose-colored glasses

I headed out for a photo walk around my neighborhood today, wandering the cherry tree lined streets.  There is something about the act of walking even only a few blocks in search of photos that always shifts things for me.

When I go on these walks I feel like I put on my rose colored glasses and become a treasure hunter of beauty.  Today I find it in cherry blossoms that have fallen from the tree and their soft delicate petals.

No matter what else is going, when I make this space to wander, take pictures and look for beauty, it re-energizes me like nothing else does.   It invites me to slow down, to engage with the light and the natural world around me.  This practice of seeking beauty with my camera has been a lifeline from darkness to light.

When I first began exploring photography I was going through some drastic life changes.  I knew the way I had been living wasn’t working for me anymore.  I was living for everyone else and not for myself.

So I reverted into a cocoon for a while, craving even more time alone than my usual introvert self needed.  I wanted to be alone and figure out who I was separate from all the outside perceptions.

I went in search.  I didn’t know how to find what I needed or even that photography would lead me there.  It was just something I could do in which there was peaceful yet creative time alone.  I knew that was the first clue to finding my way back to myself and to happiness, simply because of the way it made me feel.

I went in search of beauty and when you go in search of beauty, you find it.

At times it seems like we aren’t supposed to tell our stories with rose colored glasses, muting out the rough in favor of the radiant, the flowery, the beautiful.  Yet looking for the positive, for little bits of beauty, isn’t denying that life has rough patches: that there are broken branches or muddy puddles around those gorgeous pink blossoms.  Rather, it is a way to focus on what is positive even if times are rough (especially when they are).  That doesn’t mean denying the rough patches, but rather using photography as a tool to engage with the world around us in a way that lifts us up. 

Even these years later, I’m doing the same thing I did when this creative journey began, seeking bits of beauty.

You could say that seeing the world through rose-colored glasses is what saved and transformed my life. Seeing the beauty around me helped me find my way back to happiness again and to discover the beauty within me by documenting the beauty around me.

Will you join me today in documenting some of the beauty around you?  Let’s put on our rose-colored glasses and go treasure hunting for beauty.  Be it a flower petal, a person you love, or the beauty you see in yourself today?

Image and words by guest blogger Vivienne McMaster.