temecula photographer | 10 on 10: the july edition

my mind has been on the move. exploring. reading. i can say i finally feel like im thinking again.

…trying to find something to help me look even harder.

…to be less orchestrated and be even more in the moment  to remind me of the gifts each of these days brings me.

back in February, i started reading the book The Happiness Project on advice from my friend Sara. based on the title i was worried it was something that could be pretentious and a little too “smile through your day to make it even better”. rest assured, its nothing like that. a few months ago, i found myself highlighting a passage in the book which read: ” the days are so long but the years are so short.” that hung with me for awhile and I got to thinking how unfortunately true that really is. our days become so filled with tasks to check off, laundry to fold, trips to Starbucks and the gym that we can often forget whats really in front of us. with days that drag on and drag on, i find myself just wishing for the moment my body finally gets to flop into bed. and then before i know it, im ripping another page off the calendar and mindlessly penciling in more “to do” stuff for the following months ahead.

a few weeks ago i was up at the crack of dawn drinking my coffee, reading up on my Google reader and i found this blog post which consisted entirely of snippets of the blogger’s day in photographs. i looked at it over and over again that day. i was so drawn to it and wanted to capture my time with that kind of sensitivity and thought. i thought it could be a way for me to not have these beautiful, while sometime frustrating and overwhelming, moments not be lost in the shuffle of stacked days. that same day Chris was headed out the door fo work and left with, “remember babe, just embrace the crazy.” i started to email some friends and sheepishly asked if they wanted to join my tiny project to capture life in a day and “embrace the crazy”. happily, they really did.  as we all agreed, the whole reason we are driven to master this craft is to hang onto a moment- why not more of our moments?  i cant tell you how many of my own images have sat on my hard drive- unedited and forgotten about.

long ago, i promised myself that id never stop shooting for me and my family and now with some inspiration from another blogger and a cool little book, 9 other photographers and myself are here to devote an entire day to just shooting for ourselves. our plan is to pick one day from the month and shoot an image every hour (or close to it) with no theme or structure.  on the 10th of every month, we’ll post our 10 images that tell the story of our day. it seems like shooting for this project every month is just the perfect amount of time to notice the smallest of changes in our days. looking at this month’s, i already notice them: Jack is pre-haircut, we’ve already lost several Lego guys, and ive made those blueberry muffins twice since that shot. (also ive noticed how many tee shirt changes are happening daily. no wonder my laundry has grown exponentially. this project might actually help my laundry load shrink..!)

our small 10 on 10 group includes some of my most favorite photographers who i have been so ever lucky to know. after you get the chance to see my 10 on 10, please visit my very talented friends’ blogs starting with one of my favorite midwesterners, Amy Lucy | Minneapolis Photographer.

i encourage you to join us and try the project for yourself…we’d love to see where it takes you. there are several variations of the project out there. please check these links for more detail…

ten on ten

a picture an hour

every hour on the hour