just be.

Take my hand and I will pull you through
The light is gone but I am still here with you
You are so far away thinkin’ you should roam
My arms are ready for you to come back home

Can you feel me, feel my reach?
Take it easy, honey, and just be.
from the song "The Reach" by Miranda Lee Richards 

When difficult/bad/sad things happen in my life, I have a system in place.  I acknowledge whatever the difficult/bad/sad thing is, shove it to the back of my mind into neat little compartments and go on my way. I've always done this and it's worked just fine.  This past year I've had more than my normal share of things occur and once again, I used my 'system' of dealing with everything and again, it's been working just fine...or so I thought.

While at Oasis, during a talk Kim Klassen and Xanthe Berkeley gave, Xanthe showed a video she had made for One Day on Earth.  I'd seen it before. Numerous times, in fact.  But on that day while I watched it again, one of my neat, little compartments that I had shoved to the back of my mind cracked open and I began to cry one of those ugly, snot-nosed cries (Thank you, Siobhan Wolf, for the use of your shoulder that day).

I realized at that moment that I had stopped enjoying the most simplest of things in my life and had essentially been just existing.  When I should have been celebrating all the little things in my life, I had been in a fog, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, for the bad things to get worse.  But you know what?  That other shoe has not dropped and in watching that video made up of Xanthe's gorgeous photos celebrating everyday life, I had an 'aha' moment.  I realized that I could take what I had been shoving away, examine it a little closer, acknowledge it fully and then move on.  I was going to be okay. 

Thanksgiving is this week and my immediate family is no longer here.  This saddens me greatly and once again I put my famous system back into place just like I've always had, but this morning while looking for something in my desk I came across a photo of my brother and grandmother, both of them tucked together in the very back of my desk drawer. I held them in my hand looking from one to another and at that moment, I let myself just be.  I cried a little, but at the same time I knew that I was meant to find those photos.  My brother has been gone 13 years and my grandmother 3 years. I'll celebrate them this week and remember them lovingly, making their favorite Thanksgiving dishes to share with my husband and my boys and tell them stories of holidays past and when the day is done, I'll feel blessed and full of love for all that I have...and just be. 

Today, share with us those photos that move you and in celebrating the holiday this week remember to give thanks...and to just be.  

A Legacy of Love

My father was a professional photographer, illustrator, ad man, and filmmaker.  He photographed Charles Lindbergh and other famous people, but his favorite subjects were my blonde mother, sisters, and me.  My dad died when I was 3, so everything I know or made up about him came from a lifetime of studying his prints. 

My sisters were a lot older than I, so they didn’t need pictures to jog their memories.   I was so young when he died that I still believed in magical thinking.  You know, “step on a crack” kinds of thoughts.  My father achieved immortality for me through his photographs.  At 13, Brownie Starflash in hand, I photographed everyone I loved to insure their permanence, and I never stopped.

The Starflash became a Nikon 35mm, which became a DSLR, while my own darkroom got better safe lights, a real sink, and suddenly an iMac appeared on my desk.  I breathe photography.  Yes, I know that capturing image doesn’t keep people from leaving me.  But, it comes close.  When photographing people, an immediate intimacy happens that stays in my heart through the archived moment.  I love everything about photography.

I have immersed myself in photography projects like, They Come and They Go; a series documenting everyone from UPS drivers to first cousins who visit me, “keeping track” showcasing objects relating to memory, or Loving Aunt Ruth; a 3-year odyssey into the life of my aunt, the last of my mother’s family that turned into a book with a possible 2013 release.  I am interested in memory, time, impermanence, and love.

In 2007, my oldest sister moved to live near her daughters.  I photographed her packing and the truck taking her away, and her move prompted a feeling of urgency in me to get closer to my Aunt Ruth.  I asked Aunt Ruth if I could photograph her for a book without imaging a “real” book was possible.  At the time, I was probably thinking of a photo album.  She said, “Sure, I’ll have a party, and you can meet all of my friends.”

Loving Aunt Ruth is the culmination of everything for which I have cared:  family, story, respect, hardship, triumph, humor, and my work as a photographer.  Since the book began with a party, I chose to end it with one.  My Aunt’s 90^th birthday was a beautiful place to close a journey that we began together.  Aunt Ruth had 165 people of all ages, ethnicities, and religions to her party.  I only “know” that many people on Facebook!

My father left me the legacy of an understanding of photography’s power which opened the door to my understanding of Aunt Ruth whose philosophy of living life guided by loving and caring for people has changed mine forever.   

In the last year, both of my sisters have died.  Aunt Ruth offered me comfort and wisdom.  I asked her how she stays determined in the face of so much loss.  She said, “I have my faith, and I have a will to live…that will comes from loving people.” 

 Image and words courtesy of Honey Lazar. Discover more about her and read more about her Aunt Ruth on her blog.  

The Beauty of Words

As I unpacked my suitcase when I arrived home from Shutter Sisters Oasis, I came across a moleskin journal that I had received while there.  I took it out, set it on a table near my couch and went about my business.  A few days later, I had heard something that I didn't want to forget, so I quickly reached for the journal, grabbed a pen and wrote down what I had heard, words that had really resonated with me: Whatever follows the two words "I am" is going to come looking for you. I had to write them down.  Those words were too powerful not to remember.  Then, because they moved me so, I wanted others to feel their power as well, so I grabbed my phone, snapped a photo and shared it on Instagram.

It's been a few weeks now and surprisingly, I find myself writing something in that journal almost daily.  Even better, I've noticed in doing so I'm feeling more calm and more centered.  For someone with A.D.D. like me, that's a big deal.  When I think it's something that should be shared, I again grab my phone, snap a photo and share it on Instagram.  Not only are these words beautiful to me, but the comments I'm getting on my shared words have been awesome: Thank you for this today; Keep 'em coming!; You have no idea how much I needed this today.   Aren't words just beautiful? What a gift.  

Today, write some words of beauty that mean something to you.  You can use pen and paper, chalk on a sidewalk, lipstick on a mirror.  Then, take a photo with your camera or phone and share them with us.  If you want to share your beautiful words on Instagram, be sure to hashtag them using #thewrittenwords so we can feel their beauty, too.  You can find me on Instagram at chris_sneddon.

trusting inspiration

 

I picked up the camera so many times and looked through the viewfinder.  Maybe fired off a couple of frames half-heartedly.  Sometimes I deleted them in the camera, but there are hundreds more sitting on my hard drive, unedited, unviewed.  The light stopped speaking to me.  The camera body no longer fit my hands like a beloved tool.

If I can’t see images, how can I think of myself as a photographer?  Worse yet, what does it say about the way I’ve filled my life, if it doesn’t inspire so much as a snapshot?

It was a long way to fall.  I finished a 365 project last October, totally inspired, totally proud of myself, totally grateful.  It is a powerful exercise to keep your eye and heart attuned to the beautiful and the remarkable in the midst of your everyday life.  To have a photographic record of your progress over a year.  To begin to see yourself as an artist.

But with the year up, I stopped shooting every day.  I stopped being so mindful.  I bought myself a fancy new camera but immediately lost my courage.  It is a Serious Camera.  In my head this camera deserved to shoot Serious Things instead of my everyday life.  I shot less.  I felt it as a little death, this loss of a fledgling creative life.  It’s not the sort of thing you hold a wake for though.  No one brings you red wine and casseroles while you wonder why your eyes don’t work anymore.  There was grief but it was mine alone.

But recently I’ve started to notice shadows again.  There is the color of autumn leaves.  There are long eyelashes and kids in mismatched prints and wet dog noses.  My eyes are hungry.  My hands are a little itchy for the heavy camera body, even though it still feels awkward in my grip sometimes.  I’ve started carrying it with me again, so I’m ready when it calls to me.

I’m starting to understand that it wasn’t a death after all.  It was just the change of seasons.  I’m starting to believe that just as I know that autumn always follows summer, I can trust inspiration and vision to return.

Have you ever had a dry spell?  How did you work your way out of it?  What inspired you to start again?

Image and words courtesy of the wonderful Corinna Robbins of Bird Wanna Whistle.

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.