Yellow was such a great color for a cold, gloomy midwinter week. And once I got into the groove of Crayola crayon yellow (as opposed to construction yellow or orange yellow) I started seeing it everywhere. (And very frequently in my photo archives, too!) The first two were taken this week; the others are older but still good.
GOventure day three was a little harder. I confess I spent most of the day walking around waiting for a coincidence to hit me square in the face. That didn’t exactly happen. So when I got home from work, I was thinking about coincidences. Does it count as a coincidence if I can’t think of any when I’m trying to? Not really. Murphy’s Law, more like it.
So I got out my paper and my stamps and set to cutting and gluing my most boring, geometric, office supply type papers on a piece of 4×6 cardstock, pondering as I went. I’m not sure how I feel about coincidences in the end, because it’d be so easy to go back and think of some random thing, some tiny bit of chance, and start plotting out how much it changed the course of your life. And I do believe it happens, more than we realize. It’s a crazy thought, thinking about how much of our lives is based in random chance encounters or discoveries.
But I think in the end I personally am a little more fond of the idea that we make our own chances. Our actions, decisions, and choices, how we REACT to these coincidences that are all around us, THAT is what it’s all about.
The inspiration for day two of GOventure week is invisible, and I had a lot of ideas, most of them for photos. And then I was at work today, and the perfect thing hit me. See, being a librarian is pretty awesome, most of the time. My job is helping people find what they’re looking for, helping them figure out HOW to do what they need to do, and I love the scavenger hunt aspect of it. Most of the time.
Except some days I almost wish I WAS invisible. That I could hide (really hide) in the stacks of books and just quietly make sure they’re in order. And read a few inside flaps while I’m there. And that people couldn’t, you know, see me in order to find me and ask me questions. The best I could manage was hiding in the bathroom for a few extra moments. It helped. It doesn’t happen all the time, true. But the stereotype of a quiet librarian stamping, shelving, and shhh-ing isn’t really very accurate AT ALL.
I’ve been inspired by crafty blogs like Elise’s for a while, in my quest to add more craftiness to my life this past year. So when she and Kal invited anyone interested to join them in a week of GOventures, I thought it was a pretty cool idea. The plan was that Elise and Kal would come up with prompts every day for a week, and we’d use the prompts to do something (anything) creative. I was a little intimidated by the prospect, because I tend to craft in spurts (other than the whole photography thing), so weekday craft plans don’t always pan out. But Jodi and I emailed about it, and our conclusion was that at the very least, it’ll be fun. Even if we can’t keep up, getting your brain thinking in a creative kind of way is the whole POINT.
Anyway, day one’s prompt is wander, and I couldn’t help but go right to one of my constant battles: a wandering mind. Sometimes it can be pretty awesome, but sometimes the endless internal analysis and debate just makes my head spin. It’s something I wish I could reign in a little, but am hesitant (not to mention UNABLE) to really curb entirely. My brain is always, always wandering. And it sure can be an adventure. (Don’t even get me started about how I’ve been bitten by the “I want short hair” bug again!)
When I wrote my 28 Things To Do While I’m 28 list, several of the items on the list were meant to be ongoing. I didn’t intend to only go to one brewery, or to only go on one interesting photo-taking excursion. This past weekend, not only did I visit another brewery (the first one was Defiant Brewery in Pearl River, NY), but I had two days in a row of interesting photo-taking excursions! (It’s not the first time I’ve packed a weekend chock-full of photo-taking, either.)
On Friday, I went into New York to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Pookie and Schnookie. They go on trips like this every few months, and I’ve long been jealous of the amazing photo opportunities. I was a little nervous about the art museum factor, because I was having trouble visualizing how long I’d stay entertained taking photos of sculptures and paintings.
Well, as it turns out, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff at the Met. (Understatement of the century? Perhaps.) A lot of the pictures didn’t turn out how I wanted them to, but for all of my test shots (hee), I got a few photos I’m really, really pleased with.
What was also interesting was the fact that despite being surrounded by priceless, historic works of art, I was taking pictures of gratings, geometric patterns, and the architectural details of the museum itself. I’m okay with that. Maybe it’s just my style.
But it was an adventure kind of day, with some time spent on a random NYC street waiting for the real business of the day to conclude (some of my favorite photos are from that hour, actually!), cupcakes, and the chance to stretch the way you look at what’s around you. I can’t wait to see the pictures I took with the film camera that day.
I got a few items on my Scavenger Hunt, and this one shot on an ugly NJ Transit train that might be one of my favorites from the whole day. How crazy is that?
Did I mention the cupcakes? I had another one on Saturday and it was, if possible, more mindblowing than these ones. And I just realized I never posted the photo of that cupcake, either. I think that means I’ll have to go back for another one, and SOON.
Saturday was the first photo meetup I’ve organized, and it brought together work friends, a college friend, Dan, and a flickr friend in a way that I was nervous about beforehand. What if they hated each other and it was all my fault? Okay, well, I didn’t really think that would happen, because I know all of these people and if *I* think they are all awesome, it just follows naturally that they all think the same about each other. Turns out? We all had an awesome time. It was so cool.
We first walked around campus taking pictures of details, buildings, and dead plants. There were a lot of test shots. We took a break for coffee to rest our feet and quench our thirst, and then visited not one, but TWO paper stores. The boys entertained themselves with a book about farts, while everyone else enabled me as I bought paper, a stamp, another e for my wall of Es, oh and a little dandelion card that’s so small and adorable that I’m sure I’ll never use it.
By that point we were hungry and starting to get chilly, so we headed over to Triumph Brewery, which I’ve been hearing about from friends and coworkers for a long time. They have quite a few beers available, and most of us got samplers of all seven beers. I got to try the Honey Blonde (very good, very light), Amber Ale (loved it), Bock (also loved it), Irish Dry Stout (stouts are never my favorites, but I liked this one a lot), Bengal Gold IPA (not as crazy strong as most IPAs, but still an IPA. I’d have to be in the mood for it; the sampler size was perfect), Winter Wonder (totally awesome, and such a high alcohol content that Dan’s came in a snifter rather than a pint glass. When he asked for a man-style glass for it, they refused because the high alcohol content means they have to serve it in smaller glasses), and the Gothic Ale (an English style ale that was a little warm on purpose. Good but not my favorite). The food was pretty awesome, too. I’m so glad we went, and I’m glad I got to go with so many people, and I still can’t believe how much we laughed.
After the brewery, we were all craving something sweet, so we proceeded to the Bent Spoon, where a few of us got shakes, a few got ice cream, Dan got some intense hot chocolate, and I got another cupcake. We all wished we’d gotten what the others had gotten and the only reasonable conclusion was that we’d all need to visit again, and often. We’re already concocting plans for a warmer-weather, more beachy type of meetup.
But more than anything else, both days were everything you want a photo excursion to be – fun times full of sparkling wit, embarrassing admissions, tasty food, realizing that other people take awful photos half the time too, and above all being inspired by people who love photography as much as you do. I can’t wait until the next time we do this!
The third color for sixty-four colors was sea green, and I had a feeling this one would be more difficult. I wasn’t too surprised that I didn’t find much in the archives. But then of course I was super surprised to realize that almost the entirety of the inside of the library is sea green, so it wasn’t as tough to find as I expected!
For her birthday in 2006, I made my mom a small square cross stitch. It was an Elizabethan knot garden and I got it from a book of traditional cross stitch motifs that I bought when I first became obsessed with the immediacy of cross stitch as a hobby. Of course, that small cross stitch took significantly more time than I ever expected, but it turned out so cool and my mom was really happy with it.
I surprised her in 2007 by making another Elizabethan knot garden and revealing that it would be a trilogy, and very soon.
And then I sort of got tired of working on such intense, detailed stitching projects (compared to my usual fare!). But I wanted to finish the set, especially after my parents redecorated their bedroom and the colors worked perfectly with the little cross stitched gardens. So when I wrote my list of things to do while I was 27 in the summer of 2008, I made finishing (okay, starting and THEN finishing) the last garden #17.
And it just didn’t happen. My mom eventually stopped asking about it, and I felt bad.
So when I put the same task on my list of things to do while I’m 28 this past summer, I really meant it. I mean, cursing on my list? GASP. But secretly, I started working on it. And I finished it and succeeded in not taking or posting any photos of the finished project so as not to reveal the surprise.
And my mom was surprised, and super happy, and she didn’t even make any comments about how it took three years to get all three. And now they live happily on her dresser, and even though they’re deceptively difficult to get a crisp photo of, they look pretty awesome if I do say so myself.
Magenta was our second color for sixty-four colors, which is a color that I expected to find more of in my archives. The top two photos were taken for the project; the pink limo being a serendipitous and unbelievable find, that’s for sure!
One of my favorite new photos projects in 2010 (yes, there is more than one… and yes, I’m again taking a picture a day. Can’t stay away for long, it seems…) is sixty-four colors, which was created by Jodi and Dani as a project where they post a diptych each week inspired by the colors in a box of 64 Crayola crayons. Enough people clamored to join them that they started a group and it has been so much fun to have something to look for each week. Silver was the first week, and I’ve decided to gather my favorite silver shots (the top one is the one I took for the project, the rest are just favorite silver photos) here as inspiration.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Elizabeth. She liked to take pictures and started collecting a surprising amount of gear. Pretty soon, she realized that she needed something to carry all of this crap around! So she bought a Crumpler 4 Million Dollar Home.
And that bag was really perfect for a really long time. It kept her camera safe. But then she started collecting even more cameras and lenses. “Now this bag is too small!” she said.
So Elizabeth decided that she needed a bigger camera bag, and was given a 6 Million Dollar Home for Christmas last year.
This bag held so much stuff! Look at all of that stuff! That’s a big bag! Except it got so HEAVY with all of that stuff. “I hate to say it,” said Elizabeth, “but this bag is just TOO BIG!”
So she finally took the advice of her friends and ordered a 5 Million Dollar Home. It appeared on her doorstep a day and a half after she clicked “submit” which is just crazy talk. She opened the box and filled the new bag and declared, “This bag is just right!”
The End.
