Sisters

We've been through a lot this past year, and sadly it's not stuff I can talk about openly and not the kind of stuff one can EVER say good things have come out of. There is no silver lining.

However, even in the worst of circumstances there is always something positive to focus on and always something to be grateful for. This is probably the inspiration behind most of my photography. One of the positive things this past year has been my daughters' relationship. They have always been close, and they have always felt comfortable with each other even when they weren't able to feel comfortable elsewhere. In the lead-up to our crisis, their relationship suffered, and it was hard to watch. But now, as we are trying to heal, their relationship has blossomed once again.

My younger daughter has a school assignment to create a doll representing a part of her ethnic background. My daughter has chosen to create an Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish doll (from my father's side of the family). Most of the students are drawing their dolls on paper, but my daughter wants hers to be special, so she is sewing hers. Thing is -- sewing doesn't come so easily for her, and this is where her sister stepped in. Her sister made a point of coming straight home from school yesterday so she could help plan, cut out, and sew the doll.



I hope to get a photo of the doll when it is finished.

I find myself often converting to black and white for indoor shots. Sometimes the indoor colors can be a distraction from the meaning of the photo.

This past week's Picture Inspiration theme was Observation Mode, and we were supposed to take shots with a documentary feel. The photo on the left is my entry for the week.

Eggs and Randomness

This past week's Picture Inspiration prompt was to bring our camera everywhere so that when something random and wonderful popped up, we'd be ready. This was hard for me because I already take my camera everywhere with me, and most of what I shoot is actually totally random. So I had to look harder for something that said random to me. More on that at the end of the post.

Yesterday our friends came over to dye Easter eggs with us. We (actually S) blew out the eggs the day before and used the eggs to make matzoh brei for lunch, because we do elements of both Easter and Passover. I love mixing the two traditions like this.

We used Ukrainian egg dying tools and dyes, not because any of us hails from the Ukraine, but because they are a lot more interesting than food coloring or drug store dyes. If one is making true pysanky, one uses raw eggs and goes through an elaborate process of turning them for months to keep them from going bad, but we blew ours out first.

This type of egg dying involves scraping beeswax into kistkas, melting the wax over a candle flame, and then using the kistka to draw designs with it on the egg. After drawing a design, one dyes the egg and then adds another color of dye. I was going to say it's harder than it sounds, but I'm realizing it doesn't sound that easy. I find it very difficult and can't imagine being able to get the intricate designs of traditional pysanky.



As you can see, the candle flames add a lovely atmosphere to the dying process.

Here are some of our finished eggs (mostly one of my daughter's):



We will thread these like ornaments and hang them on forsythia branches, which aren't quite blooming here yet but will be at my in-laws, where we celebrate Easter.

Oh, and about the total randomness I needed for Picture Inspiration -- I thought our kitchen table looked pretty random after the egg dying.



I want to say thank you to our friends for coming and helping and making this such an enjoyable day. And I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday, whatever way you celebrate.

Mortal Muses: happy memories

I'm guest musing for Muse Mosey on the Mortal Muses blog today. Please come pay a visit!

Mortal Muses: happy memories: "Many thanks to Muse Mosey for asking me to guest post today. The concept of repeating patterns is little out of my comfort zone, and I enjo..."

the shape of surprise

It's time for another round of Picture Inspiration. This week's prompt was "The Shape of Surprise," or to take a photo of something interesting, perhaps a shape, in a reflection. Unlike in last week's prompt, this week we were asked to pay attention to the reflection itself -- whether the item being reflected is actually in the photo is not as important.

I noticed my kitchen faucet reflected on my wet counter and thought it fit the prompt well.  Please notice and admire that I did not crop or photoshop out the flaws in my sink, the raggedy dishcloths, or the bit of rust underneath the breadbox to the right. That's the surprise -- I know how to use my camera and my software to make my world look prettier, neater, and cleaner than it is, and I use those tools often, but I resisted them here. This is my messy kitchen. Surprise!

seeing double

This past week's Picture Imagination assignment was Seeing Double. Tracey wasn't looking for a self-portrait, but I figured it was about time. I try to take self-portraits ever few weeks.

Self-portraits are hard for so many reasons. First, they are a challenge to take -- taking a photo without being able to look in the viewfinder is always hard, whether you're holding the camera out, using a tripod and remote, or doing the "10-second dash" (using the timer and running into the photo). Second, I know very few women who are fully content with how they look, and I am no different. I can come up with all sorts of excuses as to why today isn't a good day for a self-portrait, but I don't think there's ever a good day, so I just have to do it. It's extra hard when you have children with their own self-esteem issues and you want to present a happy-with-yourself front to them.

That's a big reason why I do self-portraits -- to present that happy-with-myself front to my children and also to myself. I'm hoping it's infectious. And since I tend to be the one behind the camera most of the time and run away from other cameras, I want to make sure there are a few photos of me for posterity's sake.

This wasn't actually the photo I intended to take. I wanted to get more of me, and I had an idea of how it would look. But I got this first and I liked all the eyes. I bumped up the contrast in the reflection significantly to bring out the reflection. And I resisted my usually-present urge to warm it up.

finding my own rhythm

Interesting that the last post I put up here was about finding rhythm, because I clearly haven't yet learned to add this blog to the rhythm of my life. Between flickr and facebook and family and work, I have so many communication and creative outlets, and figuring out how to make this blog meaningful and how to fit it into my weekly schedule is a little daunting. Those of you who blog regularly, perhaps you can help me out. If you have a few things to write about on one day (perhaps because you missed a few, like me), do you fit things into one post or would you actually create a few different posts on the same day to separate your ideas?

I'm going to start here by updating my Picture Inspiration progress, and see where that takes me. I'll save this past week's assignment for it's own post, because I have some thoughts to share.

Working backwards, because that's how it would be if I'd actually kept things up-to-date:

Two weeks ago, our assignment was "to infinity and beyond." Exploring linear perspective is actually one of my favorite things to do with my camera. As far back as I can remember, I've been fascinated by vanishing points in art. My younger daughter is following in those footsteps -- lately she's been drawing roads vanishing into nowhere and talking about the metaphorical side of this. I can't get over the fact that before the Renaissance, noone could conceive of drawing landscapes in perspective, and now even a child can do it.

Tracey used a fence as an example. I participate in the Fence Friday group over on Flickr, where I've shared photos of fences with vanishing points many times over.

So for this assignment I wanted something a little different. It was surprisingly difficult to think beyond the fence for me, but on an evening walk with my husband I found these railroad ties basking in the sunset, and they seemed the perfect subject:


The previous week's prompt was "how things stack up." She asked us to photograph stacked objects. She was hoping we'd stack something ourselves and photograph that. I tried -- really, I did. I stacked bowls, I stacked books, I stacked candy... But I wasn't happy with any of those photos and preferred this springy photo of trays ready for seedlings at our friends' farm:



Okay, I've really missed a while, haven't I -- I have to go back one more week to catch up.

The theme for the third week of Picture Inspiration was Motif, a spin off the previous week's "rhythm" theme. Now I'm aware that the definition of motif in visual arts is "a design or figure that consists of recurring shapes or colors, as in architecture or decoration"and that one might usually look for a graphic pattern, such as one might find on fabric, but I was having a rough week emotionally and decided to squeeze a another photo I'd taken into the definition. This one has repeating lines, and leaves and ripples.



Okay, mostly caught up. This past week's assignment will go in its own post.