Early season grapes, in the Rhine River Valley in Germany. Filled with possibility, not yet ready for their intended purpose, but you know they will be. It’s just a matter of time.
This is how I feel today.
By the way, check out this website, THXTHXTHX, for a fun and positive little message of gratitude every day.
One amazing lesson from this journey I am on through Europe and life – Beauty is everywhere around us, we only have to see it. We only have to stop and notice. In our hurried, everyday lives do we do that?
I didn’t, until I completely uprooted myself and my family and moved across the ocean temporarily.
I didn’t, until I started carrying a camera everywhere and noticing more about the world around me in a different way.
I didn’t, until I started sharing what I found with others and recognizing the amazing joy that sharing beauty can bring.
All of these things have made me “see” in a different way. Helped me see beauty everywhere, in so many ways.
Is something beautiful if no one notices it? Our American (English?) saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has been used to mean that beauty is completely personal. But does it also mean that it requires a person, a beholder, to see it and name it beautiful?
If so, we have a big job! We have so many things around us to find beautiful. I encourage you to make something beautiful today, just by seeing it. Notice what is around you. You don’t need the move to the foreign place to change your viewpoint like I did, learn from me.
(Image is a stair railing of a townhouse in Amsterdam.)
This is me. A funky self-portrait of me in our apartment building elevator last Thursday morning. You can’t tell, but I’m full of gratitude and joy at this moment.
You see, on Thursday I got a hair cut. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting my hair cut shorter for the summer, but as I headed across the street to see Claudio, my parrucchiere, I resolved to get the usual. A shoulder length, layered, reliable haircut. But after he washed my hair, as I sat in the chair I said, from some deep down desire, un po’ corte, which means, a bit short. So Claudio gestured to me about how much, I answered Si and then I watched him snip away. I let go of any angst or idea of the results, just watched and waited. It was fun to observe him working, without expectation or worry.
The amazing thing is, I walked out of that salon feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders with that haircut. I was buoyant. For some reason, I needed this hair cut, needed to listen to that little voice inside me called intuition.
Before heading back to the apartment, I was filled with the creative urge to stop at the newsstand to get a couple more magazines for my collage class. So I did, and reveled in the feel of the breeze on my neck and savored picking out the magazines.
I returned to the apartment and grabbed my camera and went to take pictures of the spring flowers under the trees in Parco di Monza, which I had been wanting to do for over a week and kept putting off, and was filled with this wonderful creative energy that hasn’t hit for a while. You can see the result in my blog post from Friday. I was filled with joy, and gratitude for the creativity and playfulness that came upon me, the moment with my camera and the flowers, for a beautiful spring day, for being where I am in life.
In the elevator on my way home, I snapped this picture to see if I could get an interesting shot of my new haircut, and to capture the moment. It came out kind of funky and not what I would consider flattering, so I didn’t think more of it at the time. Saturday I looked at the photo again and it felt different, a little more intriguing, so I played with it a bit to get a retro feel and posted it on Facebook as my profile pic for fun. And that, in turn, sparked interesting comments and creativity from my friends, even a short story starter. I am filled with gratitude and joy that something as simple as an image can turn on people’s imaginations for a moment. That something I created in turn created a little bit of fun in their day, which then reflected back into mine.
So you see, this whole cycle of creativity and gratitude and joy started with me following my intuition with my hair cut. Since that time, I’ve been aware of all these delightful moments that connect one into the next. Ideas are flowing and I just can’t stop them! I’ve found that I need little notebooks everywhere because the ideas keep coming, from all angles, on all topics, and they won’t leave me alone until I record them some where. Maybe it’s because I’m finally listening to that little inner voice, my intuition, and since it has my attention now it doesn’t want to stop talking.
Truly, I am filled with gratitude and joy for it all. This creative energy has been amazing. Now, where’s that notebook? I have a few more things to write down…
The sun and the sea,
just waiting for me.
The sea and the sun,
reflecting beauty as one.
Poem inspired by this photo of the Monte Carlo Casino, Monaco.
Today my son Brandon picked out the picture for the post. This is part of a building and window in, where else, Burano! I loved the bright, unlikely color combination and the hint of the items for sale in the shop window.
I asked Brandon what these colors make him think of, and he answered flowers. My answer is: they remind me of a party! How about you? What do these colors make you think of?
Have you thought about the flower’s point of view before? What is the perspective, near to the ground, reaching for the sun? The answer is found in these photographs. I had a marvelous time yesterday, playing around with my camera from a flower’s point of view. I got a couple of amazing shots, like the one above and the one below. They are delightful because they are so unplanned, they are the results of experimentation and play. And digital photography is a WONDERFUL medium for this, because there is no cost to just play around! 
There is creative power in exploration and play. I’m thinking to post some “Exploring with a Camera” ideas like this from time to time, let me know if you want to participate and I’ll create a Flickr group to share photos so that we can create a little community of explorers!
So here are some tips on how to explore from a flower’s point of view:
1. Hold the camera near the ground, pointing up toward the flower. You are not looking through the viewfinder, at the screen, anything. Depending on your camera/lens minimum focus requirements you will have to play with distance to hold the camera away from the flower.
2. Shoot, review, shoot, review. Move the camera, the angle. After a while you’ll get a better hang of what you are aiming for remotely.
3. If you’re not getting the focus you want (say, on the flower), switch to a manual focus point. For the second image above, I set the focus point for top middle point, then took a bunch of pics moving the camera around a bit to get the one flower in focus that I wanted.
4. Play around with aperture. Higher aperture will give you a better opportunity to get what you want in focus. Lower aperture will really help your flowers pop, but focus will be difficult.
During the whole process, delight in the randomness of the images. Laugh at the ones that came out totally awkward. Swoon over the ones you think that come out amazing. Enjoy the freedom that comes out from letting go of planning, composing, deciding with every shot!
One final image for today, of my favorite stretch of the path in Parco di Monza. You’ve seen it in winter, and here is spring. This was the time of year we moved to Italy last year, and I remember thinking over and over “I need to go over and take pictures of those flowers under the trees” as I drove by the park. I never did, spring progressed into summer and the flowers went away. So I promised myself THIS YEAR I will go do it. And I finally did!