Hi, it's me, Emily, again. Did you think there'd be this many different projects out there? I was frankly amazed at the variety I found!
Francine Clouden is my first contributor today. Her assignment? Do a photo walk and find things that make you happy. Sounds easy enough? She describes her neighborhood as "a not very attractive urban area" and she wanted to see if she could "find things around here that make me smile and feel happy." So she packed up little Kieran headed out on their daily walk and she said she took a picture based on the following criteria: "If something made me smile or feel better then I took a shot!" I think from the picture collage she sent me, she lives in quite a happy neighborhood. All the flower and vegetable stands had me at hello.
Francine said that since she was paying more attention to her babe (as she should!), she hopes to get out and do this same walk all on her own. I hope you can do something like this too, you don't have to head out with a list of specifics to get shots of, you can just collect images of things that make you happy.
Expectant momma Erin Sweeney wanted to play along, but she suggested she try it with a fun twist. She took a belly shot everyday for 21 days. Not only did Erin see her baby growing, she also learned some things she didn't expect.
Erin: When I started thinking about this photo project, I knew I wanted the belly shots to be more than just me standing in front of a wall. I thought the best way to do this would be to take the pictures wherever I was doing something, so that when I look at them I can remember what I did that day. Sometimes this worked - working out, planting flowers, out to dinner, at my sister's pool; And sometimes it didn't - often I forgot and ended up taking the pictures at 11:59 in the bathroom mirror. I wanted the pictures to tell a story of my month in general, in addition to capturing my pregnancy, and even with the multiple shots taken in the bathroom, I think it did.
Looking back over my pictures from the past few weeks, I realized a few things:
1. Emma likes to sneak in pictures.
2. I wear blue a lot. Also, pink.
3. I need to clean my mirrors.
4. I really needed that haircut I got towards the end of the month. (I cropped my head out of the one that showed me this.It wasn't pretty.)
5. I should remember to take both a full-body shot and zoom in, since I had to crop almost all of these down.
6. I really do look like a tomato when working out.
7. Next time, remember which way I faced for the first picture, and keep with it.
8. Pretty sure I took more belly shots for this project than with my previous two pregnancies combined.
My final WCS helper today is Melissa Kaiserman. Her assignment was to get all the letters of the alphabet in photograph form. I left it open as to how she interpreted this, but gave a couple of suggestions. One being this project by JocelynneB on Flickr, another was the alphabet from nature and everyday objects, like this group on Flickr. Finally there's getting photos of the actual letters. Elizabeth turned me onto the website where you can type any word and the site will access Flickr to get those letters extracted from signs, billboards, etc. (I honestly thought this particular bit of information was in her Scrapbooker's Almanac book and I searched through it twice with a fine tooth comb. Then just now, as I was typing this up, ready to admit I couldn't find the link, I remembered it was in a Special Issue of Simple Scrapbooks called Scrapbook Play. I guess my memory does work once in a while!) Any way, I digress. Here's what Melissa put together. It's rather amazing, don't you agree?
I love how Melissa approached this, some of her photos are so clever! This is what she said about her process:
I first approached this project with the plan to take fresh pictures around our house and yard since I'm home with my kids most of the time. But that process actually started stressing me out a little bit, because I was having a hard time finding what I needed! So I decided to shift my focus to browsing my existing digital pictures. Wow! I couldn't believe all I found when I looked at those photos with new eyes. The more I searched, the more I noticed. In the end, I only ended up using 8 photos taken specifically for the collage; the rest came from what I already had. Cropping helped the found letters stand out even more. I had such fun with this little scavenger hunt!
My final project for the day, courtesy of me:
Colorado in the summer is gorgeous. Not everyday, but nearly so, the skies fill with big fluffy white clouds that seem to make the sky twice as big and three times as blue. I know it's not just this state, but it's something I do love about living here. So for the past month, I've been taking photos of the clouds. Not everyday, because I didn't want grey and rainy to part of my collection. Here's a mosaic of my collection so far. I saw an idea on another blog to frame these and make an entire wall decoration with them. You can bet I'm starting to collect frames at garage sales this summer!
And today, if you have any photo project sites or ideas you'd like to share, I encourage you to add them to the comments section. I'll try to share them in Saturday's post. If you were going to mention photojojo.com, don't worry, they're already in Saturday's write-up. Love them.
Some very random things I've collected links to make up the bonus section for today.
- Portland Grid Project which has inspired groups on Flickr to do the same, including the Atlanta Grid Project, Victoria Grid Project, Austin Grid Project, Brisbane Grid Project, Dresden Grid Project, and North End Grid Project. Basically, they take a grid of the map and their members shoot that particular part of the city and upload the photos. Wouldn't this be fun to do of your own neighborhood? I'm already scheming...
- Touching Strangers is a project of one photographer where he finds strangers and asks them to pose together, one stipulation. They must touch each other in some way. It's a really interesting group of photos. Worth the time to read.
- PhotoMemes.org This site is on hiatus, but there are still some really cool ideas and links (some don't work anymore, just a heads up).
