happy friday ...

"A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed."
~ Ansel Adams

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! xx

1/100

I have never been good at "still life's" ... i photograph things as i find them instead of creating an image. So when i came across the "100 project" it sounded like a wonderful idea. 100 still life's in a year & for me personally much more feasible than the 365 project. It's forcing me to think a little, use what's available & create an image from nothing.

So here's number 1!

California ...

You ever go somewhere & know that's the place you call home. I don't mean in the sense of a certain house being your home but this place is where you feel you belong. It's like it's part of you & you feel like without it there's somewhere missing. That place for me is California & right now i'm getting some serious home sickness!

In the midst of reading Ansel Adams Autobiography, i'm listing to him describe California in a way that i'd imagine only he could, in such sharp detail you feel as if you are part of one of his photographs. He talks about places i've seen, driven past & experienced myself but now i have to return to in the hopes of seeing the things he saw. I follow blogs such as those belonging to the Ansel Adams Gallery & Sierra Impressions Photography that remind me of the places i've been & grown to love.

The Sierra Nevadas are nothing like little old England where i grew up, vast & empty in places, they seem sharp, harsh & unforgiving compared to the green grass & rolling hills you see in England. But they seem to take over, there's no escaping them & their beauty, & the more i see the more i want to explore new areas. & not just the mountain surrounding my husbands hometown of Bodfish (it has a stop light & a Mcdonalds) but north & south to the coast & the cities. I have yet to discover a part of California i haven't felt as if i've belonged (although i'm not going to lie ... LA might challenge this). I never felt this way in the city i grew up, i was never able to be the person i really was but California lets me be me, it doesn't try & turn me into someone else.

& one day i hope to call California my official home, the place i will spend the rest of my days, hopefully earning my living selling my photographs in a little shop attached to a small gallery in a mountain town somewhere. Where people will buy my books, & notecards & prints & hang them on their walls for the world to see.

it's the simple things in life that make me happy ...

It's the simple things in life that make me happy this monday morning ...

Philosopy " Amazing Grace" Shampoo & Conditioner ...

Ansel Adams: An Autobiography ...

The Dreamy Diana Lens & adapter for a Nikon DSLR from Photojojo ...

Gorgeous portraits by Kat Forsyth ...

my kitties ...

Midol!!

oh happy days!!

So today is a much brighter more beautiful day! I made that illusive first sale Thursdaynight & i am all kinds of excited. On top of this i have another few possible sales, which strangely enough i am incredible excited about. My business cards arrived yesterday, & I'm going to be taking part in a craft fair on base in October which if it goes well, there will another in November & December. Wow so many thing's going on, but it makes me happy. Starting my own business would be awesome, it's what i want to do (in an ideal) as well as being something i can take with me. & as my friends & family have proved recently i have all kinds of support going on which makes it easier to do. But now it's a matter of trying to figure out where i go from here. How do i get my name out there, advertise & other such thing's. All this is new to me, & finding the direction i need to go in is going to be a challenge. But i like challenges & if nothing else I'm doing what i love. 

Here's an image I'm working on for one of my best friends. It was taking in Yosemite last December, somewhere i can't wait to go back to (thank goodness i married a Caliboy). I was never a big fan of "landscapes" & "pretty pictures" before that vacation but going somewhere so stunning, & being given the chance to see what Ansel Adams saw can change even a hard heart like mine. 

Here's a favourite quote of mine by Ansel Adams: 

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter" 

I think he got it pretty spot on!!