The pace of life is so fast now. The way we shoot photos has changed. No more actual film and ACTUAL printed photos. We just have storage to contend with and the daunting/time-consuming task of sorting through alllllllllll the photos to find the ones that stay and the ones that don’t need to be wasting space. I have about 14k photos on my phone (I KNOOOOOW!) and I never do anything with them. Do I routinely delete them? No. I usually wait for a long plane ride to purge the unnecessary images. But then I get distracted by the TV in front of my seat and I forget to delete them. Hence, umm 14k photos on my phone.
I often think about what it will be like for Cooper to look through photos from his childhood. He’ll have to plug in all of our old phones and sort through all of the pictures of food to find things about him/his life/his childhood/his parents. At least it’s headed that way if I don’t print out photos, make albums and DELETE PHOTOS. In my own experience, there are albums my mom made but so many photos are missing because they made their way into school projects and random throwback Thursdays and no one put them back. Systems created and habits abandoned.
Time to change that by being more deliberate and intentional.
I spent 4 hours a few Fridays back putting in the time to process the images I created from the summer into a photo book with Blurb. My book is a visual representation of Summer Bucket List for 2016.
It was a good creative/meditative challenge and it forced me to THINK SO MUCH…but in a good way. I feel like I really processed the passing of time in a way I haven’t been able to in awhile.
While doing so, I thought about why we create photo books….and how we’ve lost some of these thoughts because of our advancements in technology.
WHY CREATE A PHOTO BOOK:
AND HERE IT IS!!!
I pulled my most favorite pages from the book (there are actually 114 in total) to share with you.
The book starts with my Summer Bucket List for 2016. These were my intentions for the Summer. A few things didn’t happen which is fine, but so MUCH MORE happened! Things that I didn’t anticipate! This summer was GOOD.
So, let’s have a look!
I started the Summer with a trip to Aspen with Joy for Food & Wine. It was a blast.
We went up to Tyler Florence and talked to him about the podcast we recorded with him. We definitely made him nervous. There’s a picture of us on the next page…not for public consumption. HA.
I fell in love with dandelions this summer. I took many pictures of them and picked these two as my favorites.
Maybe I was just wishing for something.
Rocks collection from the beach, a playdate at China Camp, a hike with my niece.
Taking my niece on my favorite trail. She loved it. It made me happy.
I had Cooper draw a self portrait at the beginning of the Summer and I took a picture of him to go with it. I think it’s fun to see the passage of time through your children’s art and photos. Next year his portrait will look different and he will be another year older, but this is our story and what life is all about.
We went to my parent’s house for the fireworks. This year it was foggy.
I had a special birthday BBQ at my house for my dad’s 70th birthday. I put up balloons.
My dad was so happy.
This summer, Casey and I made a point to go on more date nights.
There are pictures in the book from the Flight of Conchords show and a few from our impromptu local bar crawl. We had a lot of fun together! The picture on the left reminds me of that weird feeling of being a parent and out of the house without your child….driving into the night.
I made a good/new friend this summer. This photo-spread celebrates the light of new friendships.
We had to cut down a bunch of trees this Summer- including the giant one that our treehouse was built around. I chose to look at the experience with the word CHANGE in mind.
Things change. It happens, but change doesn’t have to be scary.
I took Cooper on a few adventures to the redwoods and to the beach.
We searched for light in everything we did this summer. There was a moment when we were in the car and I was getting ticked off at a situation and he said to me, “Well, look on the bright side, Mom….”
My heart swelled.
There were other moments this summer that made us laugh, cry, and super frustrated but we chose to make the most out of it. These photos remind me of that.
I like little details (obviously) and I included a picture of what my “wrist candy” looked like this summer. It’s fun to see what interested you during a particular time. Right now I’m into brass, labradorite and moons! One of the gold bracelets was from my grandma and it fell off a day before she died. Weird, huh?
This picture of Cooper represents the few days he slept in. I can look at this picture…and see his cheek…with the scar on it and I’ll remember the crazy few weeks where he was covered in poison oak. We definitely team-worked that situation together. We learned to help each other help ourselves.
Summer loves.
A random picture that will make me remember that I was really into raspberries this summer next to the memory of how I put on a ladies craft night!
Our first camping trip together as a family happened to be with family. It was last minute and it was fantastic. The whole month of August I wasn’t home for a single weekend. We lived it up in August.
Beach walks, flower picking…. our TENTS.
It’s pretty meta there with my hand.
Of course I did a little spread of the meals we cooked, the view from our tent and the art time I had with my niece Abby. This section has more family photos within it. It’s full of adventure.
To sum up that time, I ended the section with the sun going down on our camp….and the cocktails by the fire.
I left wanting more camping trips in our future. The fire was ignited. We will camp soon.
I had a special ladies birthday weekend with my friend Helen Jane.
It was a local stay at my friend Leslie’s house.
We created art together and sprinkled magic wherever we went in Mill Valley. We had steaks, drinks, laughs, succulent parties and typewriter time.
It was grand and I really like our weekend color scheme.
The trip I had been looking forward to ALL SUMMER– LAKE TAHOE.
When we booked the trip, we planned it around my niece’s summer camp ending at Stanford. We didn’t know my grandmother would pass before we left.
It was a trip about introspection. It was about healing. There was a lot of rest. I thought a lot about time and how one life ends, another one begins and how we’re all are at different stages in our lives.
My father lost his mother and I lost my last living grandparent.
Cooper- August 2016 (almost 8).
My parents love a view… our house had a view… I love this view of my parents with the mountains in the background.
And I love that there was a FULL MOON on my birthday this year.
I even got into the hot tub on this trip….which did me some good despite my I DON’T WANT TO WEAR A BATHING SUIT tendencies. I ended up going in my bra & underwear and instead of feeling embarrassed, I buckled up and showed my niece and son that parents can go rogue and you don’t have to feel uncomfortable with your body if you don’t want to.
We went bowling. It’s always exciting to see how everyone reacts to their triumphs and losses during bowling. There were a whole lot of smiles.
Speaking of smiles…Here are a few of my favorites.
Tahoe was summed up in these two photos.
We looked for the light and we rested. We READ. WE ALL READ.
I thought it was good to show a few snippets from the house this summer.
I put together this little vignette to work on my design skills…but also to remember how we played ping pong on our dining room table and how the cats always find the light spots in the house.
Oh yeah…and CATS.
The last trip I took this summer was to New York for my grandmother’s funeral.
Another photo (hello, selfie!) to mark the passing of time…but also one that reflects how I was feeling in that moment…traveling alone and over thinking.
We did a lot of traveling in cars & trains during that trip.
I got to see my brother in the wild. HAHA. But really, I got to experience my brother’s life out in New York which differs greatly from mine. We live different lives but are still so connected.
Sibling notebooks, doodles while my brother was on a conference call, walking to the train with my sister-in-law & eating awesome pizza.
That’s what these photos will remind me of.
That moment in Grand Central Station I’ll never forget…and the feeling of being in the back of a cab in traffic in NYC in the summer.
For my grandmother.
Another big moment this summer- Going to the Red Sox vs. A’s game with Casey & Cooper.
Casey caught a foul ball. We were on TV and Cooper ended up on the Red Sox Twitter feed.
It was a fun night. It was probably one of Casey’s favorite days all year.
And then I tried to figure out a few images that represent my mind’s landscape at the end of the summer.
I left this period of time feeling more rested, I found deeper relationship with my niece, I embraced my love for sunflowers because they embody the SUN. I felt the sun so intensely at the cemetery when we were burying my grandmother’s ashes. It’s a feeling I don’t want to forget.
I’ll remember my early morning trip to the Alameda flea market and how I never understood this until now:
When you know what you want, what you need finds you.
The last page is meant to set my intention for the next season.
What I learned:
I am strong and I want to be stronger.
I thought that was a good thought to end on.
A little bit about the cover…
I took the title from the Beatles song. It was a song that was played at my grandpa’s funeral and it kept coming up on the radio throughout the summer.
A little more about the book:
This book Blurb’s trade book (It’s a great size! I wanted something I could throw into my purse). The book was made with standard paper. All of the photos were taken with my phone- iPhone 6s Plus. I edited most of them with Snapseed (on my phone) and did final touches through Adobe Lightroom. I used the super convenient/intuitive Bookwright software to create my book. I couldn’t be happier with the print quality and the ease of use. I loved using their custom photo/text templates to help inspire new directions in my book making process. Overall, it was a success and I love how this creative practice will inform how/inspire how I shoot in months to come.
I hope this inspires you to do something with all the photos on your phone. This definitely will be the first of MANY photo books I want to create.
This post was produced in partnership with Blurb. As always, all opinions are my own.
