Grow Old With You

Grow Old With You

I want to make you smile, whenever you’re sad. Carry you around when your arthritis is bad. All I wanna do, is grow old with you…

Yesterday I spent a little time cleaning up the to-do list.  I worked on some edits, set up some meetings, tended my social media gardens and FINALLY finished a new logo watermark.
Now I know, people tend to be pretty split on the watermark issue.  For a long time I never marked the images, mostly because I never got around to putting together a logo I liked.  Then I came up with this idea…probably about 2 or 3 months ago, thought it was super genius…and didn’t have time to follow up.  haha

New Logo!

So…what made me decide to finally mark the shots?  Well, two things.  First, I want there to be some way for people who are interested to be able to find me, as images often get separated from their captions…. And second, I wanted to make an attempt to at least show that this is a product of my heart and soul, in case push ever came to shove.  It’s easy to remove for someone determined to do so, but at least I can tell people I tried. 😉

Now, what I didn’t want to do was make an obnoxious, obtrusive, glaringly obvious watermark that detracted from the images.  I wanted something that had a way to find me (website), a personal touch (that is, in fact, my handwriting at the top) and still looked polished.

Not too bad for someone who is awful at graphic design, eh?

Now, as for the shot itself…  3 exposure manual blend, luminosity masks mostly. The image was taken in Bolton, CT at one of my favorite parks for engagement shoots. These trees reminded me of a photo of my grandparents, grandma folded into grandpa’s arms, looking off into the distance together.  Sunsets like that just sing romance. ❤

Drink The Wild Air

Drink the Wild Air

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air…” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last Saturday, we spent the day hiking around upper Vermont.  Sometimes, you just need to spend some time in nature to recharge the internal batteries, to let go of the stress of our everyday lives and to appreciate something bigger than our daily routines and worries.

If you haven’t made time for Mama Nature lately…well…what are you waiting for?  Get outside!  Trees need love too.

This is a photo from Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont.

13 mm, f/5, 1/50th sec, ISO 100 – edited with a combination of light painting and HDR.

 

Finding Our Way

Smugglers Notch Trail

I wondered, just now, how people come up with titles for their images and posts and such.  I mean, occasionally, I dream up a title to something that just feels right.  Same way with the rare poem that comes to mind, or the every-now-and-again piece of writing I turn out.  Those words are easy.  They just flow from my brain to my pen (or in this case, keyboard) without effort, already formed into a cohesive and succinct thought.  In those cases, I dare say, they were just born eloquent.  No struggling, no writer’s block, no searching for hidden meanings or words that do an image justice…  Just an outpouring of creativity.

Those are wonderful moments in any creative’s life.  You have an itch.  A desire.  A need to produce…something.  And it happens, until you’ve satisfied your craving (may I use the word obssession?  Because it seems accurate.) and can move on to the next thing in your day.

But then there is the rest of the time.  You feel an urge to create, but it is more of a vague, somewhat frustrating itch that you can neither reach nor scratch.  You know you WANT to draw from the well of your imagination, but for whatever reason, it eludes you.

I had one of those moments the other day, when I was posting this photo on 500px.  I believe the title I came up with (after 3 tries) was “Mountain Path”.  That’s like naming your black and white cat Oreo (no offense to all of the Oreo’s out there!  And as a side note, while I’ve dropped my filters and let my fingers run wild on the keyboard…what about naming a black and white cat “Monochrome”?  Huh, photo-fans?  Super-genius, right?)

Where was I?  Oh…yeah…Mountain Path.  Definitely does not do the photo any justice, however true the words may be.  My inner poet was sleeping that day, to be sure.  Something inside of me wanted to give it a name that was inspiring, and transferred the sense of peace I felt in the woods that day to the viewer.

“The Path to Enlightenment”? Nah.  It was the path to a very cold, beautiful pond at the top of a New England mountain…but enlightenment would be over-stating.

“A Walk in the Woods”? True…but not very inspiring.  A title is like Twitter…only so many characters available to convey our feelings.

“Dang, 4 Miles of Hiking Is Tiring”? As honest as it gets…but an obvious latch ditch effort. haha

So, I thought a bit more about the day, the hike, my life and what the memories meant to me.  2013 has been, simply put, the year of change for me.  I’m not the sort to generally spill a whole lot of personal details about my life, but suffice it to say, there has been a lot of self-reflection, a lot of accepting things I cannot change and resolving to improve the things I can.  One of those changes involved transitioning out of a 13 year relationship where we were both unhappy towards the end.

Since growing enough courage to make an amicable break, and finding a place of peace about the decision, I have been blessed with a fresh start.  I’ve promised myself that in this new relationship, I will try not to make the same mistakes, and to hold tight to the lessons I’ve learned.  I’m more honest, a better communicator, and more inclined to put my energy into something positive, less inclined to bury my head in the sand.

(A good course of action not just for our interactions with others, but for life in general, no?)

This day…this photo…was a great hike I took with the new guy, a day full of smiles and laughs.  It was easy, and full of promise.  To me, this photo was representative of my journey, of me finding my own way through life.  Sure, its full of twists and turns, its full of steps that made my ruined knee ache (ohh…I mean some pain) but it’s life and as long as I stay on the (blue marker) trail, I know I’ll make it.  My journey, my path, my life with all of its mistakes and lessons.  My photo.

Hey…guess I found that creative well after all.  This image is called “Finding Our Way”.

A quick technical note:  This is a pano stitch taken with my nifty-50 lens for a project being hosted by my friend Will.  This scene was suggested as a photo by the new guy, Sean.  Gotta give credit where credit is due. 🙂