Lately time has been passing very quickly and I'm feeling rather old. It makes me really think about how I'm spending the majority of my time. Usually it's working and since I'm not sure that my career and my career path are what I want right now, I've been trying to learn more about other things that I'm interested in and I've been focusing on adding more creativity into my daily life. Over the winter, I was taking courses in web design, but with a break from classes over the summer and many hot, sunny days to distract me, I've been feeling less motivated. Thankfully, as I was deliberating taking my first e-course, Arrow and Apple's The Study of Light, they offered an excellent discount and I quickly made up my mind. Though it's a go at your own pace kind of course I'm hoping it will keep me motivate for the rest of the summer and encourage me to learn more about photography. I haven't really had a chance to get started yet but fall is quickly approaching and I'll be starting new classes in September so I'm hoping to go at a bit of a faster pace - otherwise I might not finish until Christmas!
I still have to pick up most of the supplies for the course but I did grab a couple of things the other day from the dollar store. I learned a very important lesson: dollar store safety pins are not, I repeat not, good quality. They bend when you try to push them through slightly thicker fabric, but they will do for now. I'm going to pick up the other supplies over the next few days so that I can do some learning over the weekend, but in the meantime, I have been trying to take more pictures, pay more attention while I'm taking them, and relearn how to use my manual settings! I've also started a photography board on pinterest to gather inspiration and I'm keeping busy on instagram.
Here are a few of the pictures I've taken lately.
1. Relaxing in the park 2, 3 & 4. Vancouver alleyways 5. Kayakers by Rocky Point
6. Goodnight moon
Photos were taken with either my Canon Rebel T3i or Panasonic Lumix GF1 and are edited with Photoshop and RadLab.
The other day a friend an I were out on our lunch break pretending to be tourists and snapping a lot of photos around the neighbourhood. While we walked through Gastown, we were stopped by a writer for Scout Magazine who asked if she could take our picture for her street style column. We obliged, somewhat modestly (or perhaps we were just embarrassed, there were a lot of people around) and waited to show up on the internet. About a week later the column was released and I even found my picture on the homepage! It was a bit embarrassing, but also a bit exciting.
Fame and fortune hasn't descended on me yet, but it still makes me feel pretty good about myself and more confident about wearing my vintage scarves. Here I am below as pictured on Scout Magazine... I still think the way my dress is blowing makes it look like my legs have been edited into the photo.
Today I had the most amazing lunch break ever. It felt like I did so
much even though I only ventured a short distance from my office. My
friend Alicia and I wandered into Chinatown to snap
some photos and get our creative juices flowing after sitting at our
computers for half a day. We found colourful buildings to photograph and went to the Chinese Gardens which I have actually never been to before! They are so close and so beautiful I can't believe I have never been.
We wandered around and snapped photo after photo like excited tourists and I remembered how enjoyable it is just to wander around a city looking at beautiful things with no where to be. Of course we had to go back to work eventually but I definitely felt much more refreshed than I would had I sat in the lunch room for an hour!
I hope to have more lunchtime adventures like this one in the near future. And since I just upgraded my Photoshop I'll have to keep taking more photos so that I can keep learning how to edit them. Thanks to A Beautiful Mess for the tips on how to bring out the vibrant colours in my photos.
