Join me as I take one photo a week for the next year, each one capturing a specific aspect of our family life and my kid's childhood that I want remembered. You can read the introduction post here, an FAQ post here and all related posts here.
In the first week of every month I photograph a room in our home.
Assignment 32: Photograph your playroom, basement or bonus room.This is probably the least photographed room in our house. The kids are down there fairly often but the light down there isn't the greatest so I never really pull out my camera down there. Even if the light isn't great it's actually a really great space since it's only 5 steps down from our kitchen and we can easily talk back and forth when I'm getting meals ready or cleaning up.
It's also usually a mess. For those of you commented on how clean our house usually is, the adult spaces usually are but the playroom and their bedrooms are their spaces. I make them completely clean them up once or twice a week so I can vacuum but they usually semi-clean it on their own more often than that because all the toys on the floor means there's no room for soccer or hockey. Although this morning it looks like they just 'zamboni-ed' them all to the side.
So, as usual, I'm thankful I created this project. It's funny how I think because I always have my camera out that I'm capturing a complete picture of their childhood yet it wasn't until this week that I realized I never photograph them in their playroom. I did photograph it once before when I was talking about our Sarah Jane art (which is on the wall I'm standing against to take this photograph) but I don't have many of them playing in there.
If you're playing along with the project, I'd love to see what your playroom looks like. Link below in the comments or send me an email.
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Digital Collections Survey
Have a great weekend everyone!
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Even though she's acting older and more independent each day, there's just something about seeing her asleep in her crib all sweaty and warm with that chooch in her mouth that still makes her seem like my little babe.
Please check out the links to these amazing women to see what 'sleep' looks like at their house.
Sara, Janet, Carla, Lena, Rose, Naomi, Tracy, Rhonda, Heidi
Let me know if you're playing along and we'll add you to our list for next week. Next week's theme is 'quiet'.
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Awesome perspective! SO, so sweet. Love watching my kiddos sleep. (and as you'll see from my post...I wish my baby slept more! ha.)
What a wonderful shot Jenn! Loving the lines. And it makes me miss my little ones. :)
absolutely adore this shot. they are so peaceful when they sleep how did you get so high up?! and i'm curious if she woke up when you took this too.
Love the perspective you chose. And no matter how big she gets, she'll always be your baby. :)
You keep having those babies....they will make life crazy but fill your home with love and laughter when you are old!! Plus you get to have more grandbabies to watch sleep, the cycle never ends!!
I can't imagine how you managed to get this shot - amazing!
And I've been playing along for a couple weeks - please add my to your link list!
They are so sweet in their crib. I love this perspective - great lines!
Nice shot, how did you do that? I kinda, almost wish I had a little one to watch sleep.
I used to put my youngest in the one piece fuzzy jammies and man oh man did he sweat. I had to stop and use something a little thinner. ha
I love the perspective on this! Babies sleeping are the best.
I have always felt strongly that digital files do not serve you, as the client, well and I always try to communicate the importance of fine art prints and albums when I reply. And, for the most part, I think I do a pretty good job. But the question still comes up so often and I don't really understand it.
The photography labs available to Canadian consumers are sub-par at best so I have trouble understanding why a client would spend the money having their family photographed by a trained professional portrait artist and then have the images printed somewhere where the final product is too blue, too dark, over-sharpened, blurry and just generally doesn't look very good.
I also firmly believe that once you receive your digital images and ooh and aah over them for the next week, they end up languishing on a harddrive.
So please, help me understand. I'm not opposed to adding digital files to my product offerings. It's just that I really don't understand why you want them and what you want to do with them.
Why are digital files so important to you? I'm going to be sending out a survey to my newsletter list on Friday. If you're not currently on the list but would like to take the survey, you can sign up here. I send out maybe four emails a year so your inbox will not be inundated by me, I promise.
newsletter signup
(If you're reading this from a blog reader, you may need to click over to my site to see the newsletter signup box).
In asking you this question, I feel like I need to mention that as I add digital collections to my product offerings, the collections are going to be priced in a way that ensures I can still pay my taxes, insurance, website costs, equipment maintenance and repair, continuing education and compensate myself for the time spent away from my family. Giving away a disc of images along with the session fee would not only mean that I would be working for free, it would mean I would have to pay money into my business in order to keep it going. I love you all but that's not going to happen. :)
The survey will be anonymous but I do want to thank you for taking the time to help me create really relevant digital packages. You will have the option to enter your name and contact information at the end of the survey and I will do a random draw for one complimentary photography session. The survey will be active for one week (until Friday February 10th at 5PM PST) and I will do the draw for the session shortly afterwards. The session will take place in the Lower Mainland between April 1st and June 30th so you're welcome to enter the draw if you live outside the Lower Mainland as long as you're planning on being in the Vancouver area sometime during that time period.
And because it doesn't feel right posting without a photo, here was my company yesterday as I was working my way through this.
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love these shots of him. my kids like to get down nice and low when they colour too - it cracks me up. i'd love to hear the results of your survey. and i totally agree with you on why you don't freely give away your digital files.
Join me as I take one photo a week for the next year, each one capturing a specific aspect of our family life and my kid's childhood that I want remembered. You can read the introduction post here, an FAQ post here and all related posts here.
January has five Mondays (and my project has four assignments each month) so this week is a bonus week. If you've missed a week or two, now is a great time to catch up. And even if you haven't been playing along, this week is for everyone.
Assignment 31: Change it up.If you take a look through all your photographs, you'll probably see a lot of similarities.
When I'm photographing my own family inside our home I tend to take photographs from the same angle, in the same position, with the same lens because it's easy and it works.
It's definitely not the only way I photograph them but looking through all the photographs of them in our home, I can certainly see where my comfort zone is.
So today I'm challenging you to change up the way you photograph your littles. If you always shoot from your level, get down on there's. If you always shoot towards the window, shoot away from the window. If you always zoom in close to them, zoom out. You get my point.
This week I decided to photograph my littles from above. The toughest part? Making sure my slippers weren't in every single shot.
They had decided they wanted to go on a trip so they packed up a bunch of stuff into Angelo's suitcase and backpack and went on a vacation to Gracie's rug. I love how they play together.
And it hadn't occurred to me that I didn't have a photograph of his placemat. He loves it but it's getting really worn out so it's almost time for a new one.
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What a great perspective! I'm thinking I need to change things up a bit now. :)
I really liked this challenge. Didn't realize I was always taking things from the same angle. I find I also zoom in lots to try to block out distractions aka. clutter in the background. Thanks again for this great assignment. I'm really enjoying blogging again and look forward to checking out the upcoming challenges.
I am really digging your angle. Love the shooting down perspective. All the little details that get missed when shooting straight on. Your an inspiration as usual:)
totally love your perspective in these shots. great challenge again, jenn.
I walked out into the garage this week and saw our summer tires sitting there and couldn't resist.
Even more amazing women have joined our project this week. Click on the links below to check out what 'tired' looks like to them.
If you want to join in, send me an email or comment below and we'll link to you next week. Our theme for next week is 'sleep'.
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OMG---you catured tired! I love this post, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!
PERFECT!
this totally made my smile this morning jenn!
seriously great job!
hahaha :)
Ha! This is great! Looks like he enjoyed it (just a little bit, huh?)
you rock, i would have never thought of going this route. way to think outside the box!!
you rock, i would have never thought of going this route. way to think outside the box!!
I actually wanted to do a literal TIRED shot like this, too. Sadly we have no spare tires in our garage. :( You did this PERFECTLY! The background makes it so lovely and simple. A+!!!!
OH, I love it! I love how outside the box this is. Way to go. Thanks for the smile. Such cute kids! :)
oh my gosh, are you kidding me?! this is PERFECT. absolutely PERFECT.
BRILLIANT! I LOVE IT! TYPING IN ALL CAPS TO COMMUNICATE JUST HOW MUCH I LOVE IT! What is the backdrop?????
BRILLIANT!! I LOVE IT!! TYPING IN ALL CAPS TO COMMUNICATE JUST HOW MUCH I REALLY LOVE IT! What is the backdrop??
I'm so in love with this!! I love that you thought outside the box. Especially that first shot. Just adorable.
This is a cute take on the muse this week! Have a great weekend!
How brilliant are you? So creative! Love the light. They look like they could be in a gap ad, so cute:)
Super creative. I never would've come up with that. Your kids are so cute!
Great idea, Jenn! Very clever take on the theme. And how cute are your kids?
These are really amazing. Wow. So, I'm curious, do you have an all gray garage? How did you get the background and floor just the same color? It looks like a studio session!
Love these photos - Gracie looks like one tough chick in her motorcycle boots :)
Oh my goodness...I totally laughed out loud! Too cute!!!! And I totally want Grace's leggings! First her tights, now her leggings...I can't wait until she's 12 and I can get her hand-me-downs! :)
What a beautiful picture. You have captured their expressions perfectly.
OMG, you did something I wanted to "think up". Only I didn't think it up. And I missed last week all together. Big L over my forehead! I Love, love, LOVE the tire shots! Maybe I should have more kids to take pictures of them in tires!
If you're new to my blog you can read more about my Our Year in Photos Project here and read all related posts here.
At the end of each month I create an album layout out of that's month's photographs so that at the end of the year my album will be ready to go and not require any work on my part to get it ready for printing. I also choose two (or three or four, but I try to keep it at two) favourite photographs from the month that weren't from the project. Sometimes those photographs are just random ones I've taken of our family that I love and other times I use those two photographs to include an event in our album that I don't want missed - a wedding, a birth, etc.
My album is a 12"x12" album and it's going to lay flat when you open it which is why some photographs look like they're going right through the spine of the album.
For my favourites this month I had to include some photographs of our trip to Mexico - one of my sister and new brother-in-law and one each of the kids doing their thing at the pool and beach. Gracie loves her gymnastics class and her favourite thing is to swing off the high bar. When we got to the pool and she saw this handrail in the shallow end, all the she wanted to do was swing off it.
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Your sister is beautiful! At first I thought that was you... and I was like... why is Jenn getting married to a new guy?
VERY confusing... and distressing. ;)
Oh my gosh, Gracie's swimsuit is SOOOOO cute! Where did you get it?!
And love that photo of your sister and BIL. Her dress is beautiful.
This book is going to be so awesome, Jenn.
Great pages! You'll be so happy to have everything all laid out at the end of the project so you can just send it off to be printed. I've aspired to that level of organization but never reached it!
I love that you're prepping everything as you go so you're going to have a whole year of memories as soon as you're done. Your kids are so you...absolutely adorable!
Join me as I take one photo a week for the next year, each one capturing a specific aspect of our family life and my kid's childhood that I want remembered. You can read the introduction post here, an FAQ post here and all related posts here.
It's the fourth week of the month so this week I'm photographing more of the details of our life.
Assignment 30: Photograph their height.There are so many ways to go with this one but your assignment for this week is just to photograph your littles any way that shows their height today.
When I first pulled up my calendar to see which photo I had planned out to photograph this week and saw that it was 'height' I immediately wandered down the pinterest path of growth charts and got lost for the next three hours. For some reason when I read that prompt, I envisioned a jagged little pencil line marked on a door frame with the date and each of their names written beside their own little line.
Except then I spiraled into thoughts of how we'd never be able to paint their rooms because their little growth charts would be on their walls and then we would never be able to move from this house because then we'd be leaving their growth charts behind which is how I found myself on pinterest looking for inspiration on creating my own wooden growth chart that I could nail to the wall.
And it was after those three hours that I remembered that the whole purpose of this project was to capture the details of our everyday life, not the one I suddenly need the feel the need to create after being on pinterest.
So yesterday after church I photographed them using their dad as their measuring stick. I love how Angelo comes up to his elbow and Gracie comes up to his wrist and how you can see their height in relation to each other. How he is cuddled up next to his dad (his favourite spot) and she is performing and wiggling and can't wait to break away and dance. The perfect reminder of exactly why I started this project.
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Ha! You are wise. At our old house we had the penciled growth chart on the wall in our closet. When we moved I got all panicky. My husband actually transferred the growth chart onto a long roll of paper and made me a wood growth chart to transfer all the info on for the new house. Blah. It still makes me sick to think of their baby hands and feet that are pressed into concrete at our old house. ;) I love that your shot has them measured up against dad. :)
I love how you photographed this! What a great way of capturing their littleness in contrast to an adult. My son is almost as tall as me now!!!!!!
Your solution was brilliant and simple! Congrats on staying true to the goal of capturing everyday life. We have a growth chart that gets around the "what if we move" issue - Sophia's grandparents painted a wooden board with her name and measurements and the board hangs on the wall in her room. We measure her on every birthday.
What a great way to capture their growth! I am always kind of keeping track of how tall is next to me. Is already half my height (i'm only 5'4") and he's only 5! Stop growing already! We got the Pottery Barn growth chart that looks like a big ruler. I have yet to put his growth marks on there, but at least I know I can take it with me if we ever move. ;)
I love that you chose to "measure" them against dad. I totally want Grace's tights! I love that she's a little firecracker. :)
So smart to use dad! I had the same idea about making something to take their picture next too and then quickly realized that was CRAZY :)
love this. such a great idea - totally thinking outside the box. i'm struggling with this one.
10 points for working in the term "zambonied" looks like pretty nice light to me too!
haha! love Kristin's comment. :)
and totally, totally love seeing this peek into your playroom. do you guys live in a split level? love that you still have such big windows down there. and i can't tell you how happy and relived it makes me feel to see toys all over the floor. ;)
Nice to see some mess in your home! This looks like a fun and well-used room!