How Things Stack Up

I have spent many hours playing blocks with my kids.  With care we would stack the blocks on on top of the other, as high as we could.   We built until either we ran out of blocks, we ran out of interest or the tower crashed to the floor.   So proud were the occasions that we successfully built our castles with every block in the bag. If the tower crashed, we would take the lessons we learned about structure, balance and strong foundations to rebuild a better, stronger palace.   

Life stacks up in much the same way as those colourful building blocks.  Seemingly small choices in your life can turn into something amazing.  My friend Jen started walking each night after dinner.  One step at a time, one choice at a time she not only lost weight but has become one of those crazy runners that will run in any weather (just kidding Jen, you know I love you.)  This weekend Jen will run the Around the Bay race, a 30km run.  One step at a time, one choice at a time. 

Alternatively, crappy choices can stack up and cause your castle to crash. 

I've found it's not the big decisions that cause your castle to crash.  The big, life altering choices are the ones that you think long and hard about the ones where sit down to make a pro and con list. 

No, it's the small decisions that can come up and bite you in the butt.  The small choices are the ones that make up life.  The choice to eat the donut or not, to go for the walk, to save up your pennies for a rainy day or blow a bit of extra cash on a new pair of shoes.  It's little, everyday decisions like these the when you reflect back on let you know how things, how life stacks up. 

Phew, that was long winded.

The whole point of me blogging about stacks is because Week 3 of Picture Inspiration had us looking for stacks.  Tracey encouraged us to not only look for stacks but to play photo stylists and create our own stacks.  After all the talk about building blocks, you would think that I chose to photograph a  block castle. 

Nope. 

Jello.  The boys and I made rainbow jello in honour of St. Patricks Day.  Rainbow layers!

Totally unrelated to building blocks, but enjoy none the less. 

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What's Your Motif?

Motif:

1. a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., especially in a literary, artistic, or musical work.
2. a distinctive and recurring form, shape, figure, etc., in a design, as in a painting or on wallpaper.
3. a dominant idea or feature



  Picture Inspiration asked us to look for and photograph motifs in our everyday lives.  When I went looking around my home for patterns, they were hard to find.  I realized  that I am not a pattern person.  I have stripes, plaids, and polka dots but very few patterns in my home.  I'm hoping that next week I will be more inspired from the prompt.  sigh.

Finding Rhythm

rhythm - (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) (in painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.) a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternating with voids, of light alternating with shade, of alternating colours, etc.

The Picture Inspiration prompt this week asked us to explore this definition of rhythm.

Oh dear.  My house, my life and quite frankly my mind has lost its rhythm.  I go through spurts where my mind races, jumping from one idea to the next. The only problem with these moments of inspiration is that they are fleeting.  These ideas come so quickly that I can't seem to grasp them.  Or if I do grasp them I don't hold the attention span to finish them, which only adds to my anxiety.  My house is full of half finished projects and scraps of papers with ideas jotted down.  During these spurts, I go to bed exhausted, only to have my mind race on into the night.  I knew that finding rhythm this week would be a challenge. 

I thought about how I would like to portray rhythm in my capture.  Rhythm, hmm.  I think music and dance. 
I wanted to take a picture of a musical instrument.  A piano would be perfect, with it's alternating dark and light keys, but it was the obvious choice.  I thought how cool would the insides of the piano be?  With the felt hammers hitting the strings.  A sweet mommy friend said I could come take a picture of her piano.  It's one thing to grab a quick shot of piano keys but it's another thing entirely to climb up to take a picture of the insides of her piano (cue anxiety setting in.)  

Instead, I photographed our auto harp. The auto harp is a pretty cool instrument.  Ours has a colourful history behind it.  My father bought the auto harp for his brother Birch.  Birch was an interesting character to say the least.  What I remember about Birch was that he smoked roll his own cigarettes, drank beer and told ghost stories to scare his nieces and nephews.  Uncle Birch was an interesting man, but not musical.  When my father would visit with Birch, he would ask if he had been playing the auto harp.  Birch would reply that it was out of tune.  My dad would spend the time to tune it for Birch.  Only to have the same conversation with him the next time he saw his brother.

auto harp - a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternation with voids, light alternating with shade, ect.

I uploaded the auto harp picture to the Big Picture Classes gallery.  But wasn't sure of it.  I went on a mission to find rhythm in my house.  I snapped this of the dinner plates.  A pretty picture, but I just didn't feel it. 

 

dinner plates - a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternation with voids, of light alternating with shade, ect.

I tried one last time.  Rhythm.  I thought of cars on a highway, whizzing past much like the thoughts racing through my head.  I set out to get a picture of cars.  What I ended up with was this picture of the hydro field. For some reason, I love this.  I can't say why I love it so much, it just speaks to me in a way that the other images didn't this week. 

pink hydro field - a harmonious sequence or pattern of masses alternating with voids, or light alternating with shade, of alternating colours, ect.

Picture Inspirtation

Back in January I took part in Picture Winter, a big picture class instructed by Tracey Clark, founder of the shutter sister website.  In my world of photography, Tracey Clark is my rock star. Anyways, I signed up in hopes of getting camera and editing tips from Tracey.
 
In fact  Picture Winter was quite different than I expected.  What I got was something far more life changing.  I didn't expect such  a warm and supportive community of photographers cheering each other on.  I didn't expect to feel such a sense of belonging.  I didn't expect to make friendships.  By about midway through the class, it was obvious that none of us wanted it to end.  And the seed for Picture Inspiration was planted. 


Picture Inspiration is not so much a class as it is a community.   A "virtual coffee shop- a place to gather, chat, share photos, glean insights, asks questions and get inspired. Through connection and creativity, we will delve deeper into what it means to use photography to reveal the magic in our everyday lives. "

And so I begin my year long Picture Inspiration journey. 

The first weekly prompt: It's All About You. My goal this week is to capture my heart and soul through a self portrait.