If you want to be happy, be.

This quote was in a newsletter I got yesterday.  It was attributed to Leo Tolstoy.  A short little sentence it is, but oh the power it assumes.  As I read it and thought about it, I could almost feel the happiness roll over me. 

If you want to be happy, you can be happy.  Why is it that we tend to give away to others the power of our own happiness?  By that I mean the self defeating statements that I know I’m guilty of enunciating like “I’ll be happy when  . . . we can buy a bigger house . . . this winter is over . . . fill in the blank.”  It could be anything on which you hinge happiness. 

 So, stop waiting ... 
Until your car or home is paid off. 
Until you get a new car or home. 
Until your kids leave the house. 
Until you go back to school. 
Until you finish school. 
Until you lose 10 lbs. 
Until you gain 10 lbs. 
Until you get married. 
Until you get a divorce. 
Until you have kids. 
Until you retire. 
Until summer.. 
Until spring. 
Until winter. 
Until fall. 
Until you die. There is no better time than right now to be happy. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. So work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt, 
and, dance like no one's watching. 

If not now, when? Your life will always be filled with challenges.  It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time with ... and remember that time waits for no one. 

I recall a story that was emailed to me a few years back.  A man’s wife had just died and he was preparing the outfit in which she would be buried.  In her closet he comes across several brand new outfits, lovely ones, still with tags on them.  She had been saving them for something, some special time, not thinking that the day may never come.  Feel good and be happy now.  Why had she not enjoyed the new clothes and the way they felt against her skin or the way the color set off her eyes?  Why wait?

Okay so as we roll into another year, I’m going to post this little quote on the top of my day planner.  I will write it in random places in my calendar to remind me that I don’t need a reason or have to wait to be happy.  My life is good today. 

Merry Christmas all!

The gift of giving . . . gives back



boat in scarborough maine

As a photographer and the “creative” one in my family, I often find myself charged with creating the “unique” and personal gifts that we like to give. Okay, really, I take on these projects myself, never usually assigned by anyone, just me and my desire to give gifts at Christmas that are not store bought, not discount, not last minute attempts. I want to use my talents to give something to someone that 1. They can actually use. 2. They think is cool. 3. They won’t get from anyone else.

I find that the process of sorting through photos, for me, is a gift itself. Doing something like this gives back as you get to relive some of the memories associated with the images. No matter what the subject or theme, whether it’s a year in review book or a calendar of wedding photos, you are the one making the decisions about which images to include and what kind of story you will tell.

We recently lost our cat and miss him terribly. I decided to make my daughter and husband each a book of photos of him (and ended up making a calendar, too). I sorted through 4 ½ years of photographs, looking for shots of him or with him in them. I was happy to find that all those photos I took of him just trotting across the lawn, or holding a mouse in his mouth, or lounging (and this cat could lounge!) found a purpose in these creations. It was a wonderful experience for me to be able to relive our time with him and our lives that went on around and including him. When my husband gave us Jimmy Buffett tickets for Valentine’s day, our cat was right in the middle of the fake rose petals and pink wrapping paper. At our first Christmas in our new house, I photographed him crouched under the tree, illuminated by the lights. He was a part of our lives, the small events I photographed, the times we remember.

Photographs, in many cases, are all you have to recall special times and people. Long after the wedding – the dress doesn’t fit, and the cake top is gone – you have your photos. You can go back to the places you’ve visited when you look at the vacation photos. You can share these experiences with others on facebook or twitter. The pictures of the way we spend our lives have meaning to you as a photographer, as the one who stood in the sand to shoot the palm tree and the snorkel gear, or the one who looked up from bird watching to catch the cat using your garden as his litterbox. For this reason, the giving of memories is a gift to both the people behind the camera and the recipient of the thoughtfully crafted gift.







So with this in mind, I tend to turn to photographic items such as calendars, photo books, coffee mugs and the like. To create this stuff, I have found that there are a million websites you can go to where you can upload your photos and use them to make items. At this time of year many of them offer pricing specials which generally do save you some money.

While being a professional does allow me some access to sources out there who cater to photographers, I usually go back to Shutterfly http://www.shutterfly.com/ for holiday gifts. I’ve also used MPIX http://www.mpix.com/, and Vistaprint http://www.vistaprint.com/. These online vendors cater to everyone. Their pricing is competitive in the retail market, which doesn’t make them a viable option to use when I’m selling the work, since I need wholesale pricing in order to be able to realize a profit. But for gifts, it’s reasonable. Most importantly, I find that the quality is good, depending on the item.

Shutterfly does a great job on calendars and photo books. The calendar templates are easy to use and you can upload as many photos as you want. They have a wide variety of designs to start with and you can select the number of images you want to use on each page. Another feature I like of theirs is that not only can you assign special dates within the year (Joe’s birthday, our anniversary, etc.) you can now add a photo to the date. It’s really nice for the visual queue for a date you want to remember. The paper stock they use for calendars is a nice durable cardstock which comes packaged in individual plastic zip bags. I’ve also done several photo books on Shutterfly and they’re crisp and bright and well bound.

MPIX has undergone changes in the past year as they transition from a “photographer’s” lab to a broader base. That’s just my analysis and I could be wrong about their strategy. Their partner lab, Miller’s is the site used by photographers who want to create albums of wedding photos for clients and other client centered products. MPIX is good for prints and framed or mounted artwork. If you want your photo of the waterfront where you spent your honeymoon printed on metallic paper and mounted to a foamcore board, MPIX can do that and get it to you in 2 days. I use them for my gallery prints. Their quality is fabulous. What I don’t like is that after a certain period of time, your photos will be deleted from your albums. I guess this is an effort to save space, but I like to be able to go on and order the print I need and not have to keep uploading images repeatedly.

Vistaprint seems to be everywhere these days. They advertise on eBay and once you’re on their mailing list, you’ll get emails about every sale and promotional item they’ve got, and they’ve got a lot. The things that I’ve had a lot of success with and found the pricing and quality to be good enough for me to resell are the postcards and notecards. I’ve designed and purchased many different layouts. They’re also good with business cards (cheap!) and rubber stamps and stickers, all of which I use as part of my branding for my business, to create a cohesive, intentional marketing effort. For holiday and other gifts, they do offer Christmas cards and postcards, which I would imagine would be of the same quality. Last year I ordered a few calendars just to see what they’re like, as I had received an email stating they were FREE (got to pay shipping) and found myself engaged in the design only to find that Vistaprint charges $4.99 per image to upload your photos. They must have been running some kind of special (they always seem to be doing that) or I would not have paid upwards of $60 to upload a dozen photos. And I was disappointed by the quality – thin flimsy paper with cheapy feeling plastic ring bind, like this was a school project and not a professionally designed calendar – not good enough for me to sell and the prices to buy make them unrealistic to do so. My advice with Vistaprint: stick with the things they do well – business cards, postcards, notecards, stamps. Something I truly dislike with this site is that when clicking through a promotional email and logging into your account, the pricing often changes. Something advertised as free somehow ends up as $7.99 once it gets to your cart. By that time you’re so invested in the item that you get it anyway. They offer a ton of other “services” and products and it can be hard to just get to the end because you’re bombarded with marketing. But if you get through it all, some items are worth it.

The other day I received the calendars I made for my family and friends. Rather than giving them photos that are best sellers for me, I used only images from the past year. It gave me an opportunity to pour through and relive our year and be able to highlight some images that I have yet to post for sale or otherwise show the world. I took the time to make the edits necessary to use the image in the calendar and take them to the next step. The best part is that I was reminded that we had a pretty good year, a year of a lot of changes, loss and love, fun and family. While I was showing the calendar to my husband and daughter, I told them about how the rocky coastline photo in July is from when we went camping this summer on Hermit Island and that the blue shuttered house on that same page was from when my daughter and I took a day trip to Bar Harbor. August 2012 is full of our August 2011 adventures and includes the Victoria platters at Longwood Gardens and the adobe window and cacti from our stop at San Juan Capistrano in California. I’m anxious to share these memories with my family and friends and show them around my year.

This is the gift I get by sharing.

Five small years

 

Indulge me if you will.

Humor me while I pat myself on the back. 

Today is a day of celebration.

It’s a day that for a long time I couldn’t even imagine.  Couldn’t fathom.  

Today marks five – count em’ – five years of sobriety for me. 

Yayyy me!

So today, I’m going to put my camera down, wander away from editing, and stop for a moment and thank people and think about the past five years.

I first have to thank my husband.  He wasn’t my husband when we started this journey, so many many years ago as friends.  We had partied together, with our respective former spouses, and always maintained a connection through the years and through divorces.  When I called him, what was it, seven years ago, and told him that I was now single, I had been drinking that night.  It was a classic drunk dial.  But I did remember him telling me that he had quit drinking and had celebrated two years sober just a few months before that.  I couldn’t believe it.  I wanted to know why.  But not why, like what happened to bring you to this decision, it was more like why the hell would you want to do that?

Fast forward.  This man put up with a lot of the usual alcoholic behavior from me.  Lying, manipulation, deceit, heartache.  But he was there that day that I woke up and said that enough was enough.  And he cheered me on at every turn.  And though it’s been a long time since the thought of a drink had me firmly in its clutched fist, we still talk about it.  We even joke about it.  Despite his argument to the contrary, I don’t think I’d be sober without him.  He’ll probably never read this blog.  He doesn’t care much for sentimentality.  He just knows.  He gets it.  He gets me. 

My parents have been cheerleaders, too.  When they let me move back in with them so that I could start down the path to recovery, I doubt they knew what they were in for.  I detoxed and put together a few days, then a few weeks of sobriety, making an effort to go to AA meetings, and appear sincere, and then I’d relapse.  Some trigger or another had me off to the store.  It was a horrible, desperate time for me and for them.  How to win the battle?  I know they were relieved when in a final frightening weekend, my now husband asked me to move in with him.

It was supposed to be for ninety days, or for whatever it took for me to get sober.  I had to commit to rehabilitation, which I did.  Finally it felt like I was doing this for me and not to please others.  I couldn’t keep living the life I had been.  Those ninety days were hard days.  I went to meetings daily, to intensive outpatient treatment and tried to help others, giving rides and making phone calls.  My husband says that he know when I moved in that he was going to marry me.  He was right. 

So, because I got sober so many things have happened that I must be grateful for. 

Set aside the love story, which intertwines throughout.  I was able to repair the damaged relationship with my parents.  I worked on the financial disaster I was in and took responsibility for myself.  I learned to stop blaming others for my actions.  I have this absolutely wonderful daughter who is growing into a very cool teen.  I love that she is here with me in this house we bought and that we have a home and a life together. 

I renewed my passion for photography and picked up my camera instead of a drink.  In the past five years, I’ve grown this little business and have learned so much more about my craft and about the business of photography. 

I’ve traveled to places I would have never dreamed.  Of course you think of places like Orlando when you’re a kid, but I didn’t have a clue about Mexico.  I’ve snorkeled in the Caribbean and rode the tallest and fastest roller coaster on the continent. 

I make a mean guacamole and ran a 10 k.  I saw the Lion King on Broadway and Blue Man Group at the Charles Theatre in Boston.  Cozumel.  Phillipsburg.  Hollywood.  Virginia Beach.  Tampa Bay.  Bar Harbor.  My own backyard.  Planted gardens and flowers. 

All in the last five years. 

I sit on the couch at night and watch TV with my family and it’s all perfectly normal. 

This morning I took photos of frosted leaves and snow in my driveway before going to work.  Simple little things like that are things I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to experience had I continued drinking.  Hell, I don’t even know whether I’d be alive.  I’m certain that my daughter would not be living with me and my husband wouldn’t be my husband.  That much I know.  Where I would be no one knows.  It’s surprising and wonderful the paths we take and where they lead us.

So today, today is yet another day that I won’t drink, and I will love and be loved, trust and be trusted, give and be given to.  Today is another reason to celebrate.

Christmas Stalking

The little trick or treaters had barely been nestled into their beds when I heard it.


The first jingle of the holiday sales season.

Marketers so focused on one of the three big kid holidays of the year quickly shifted gears and ads went from orange and black to green and red. Pumpkins into snowmen. Autumn leaves into snow flakes. Red ribbons on boxes and that silvery sparkle everywhere.


The seasonal queues not so subtly slide into place.

This brings me to the topic of Christmas stalking. Really, Christmas stock, as in stock photography. I just like to create that visual of the holiday lurking and haunting us as it does. Part of the ability of the advertising world to be able to send us those little hints of the impending demands of this time of year comes from their access to seasonal stock photography. By that I mean the photographs that are used just about everywhere you look, if you know that you’re looking at them.







It’s the sparkly Christmas tree branches, the smiling kids with snowballs in their hands, the happy family in new pajamas sitting by the fire, the pretty boxes stacked up in an unnerving tower being carried by a smartly dressed woman who appears to have it all under control.

Seasonal. Holiday. Christmas. Those are the keywords that click.

So I have to admit that it was months ago when I started thinking about holiday stock. I bought a few props at the dollar store and created scenarios to photograph for stock. This image is pretty simple: a cup, some fake holly berries, and the idea that it would imply a relaxing tea in a busy time.

Last year as I began to put away the ornaments, I found the contrast of the freshly fallen snow and the brightly colored Christmas balls impossible to resist. I tossed them out to see where they’d land. With a tangle of red raffia, they disbursed into these images.

The decorative pine cone on the snow. (I shot this sometime in March.)

The carefully and colorfully wrapped presents. (I wrapped these in September.)

The smiling little girl hugging her presents. (ok, this was shot in December, a few weeks before Christmas, and the presents are fake and she's a good actress.)

The point is that the images you’re seeing everywhere are often shot by people like me. And people like me think about stock photos all year round. I’ve become accustomed to the potential for any combination of items to, at certain times of the year, evoke certain emotional responses.




In order for the advertising folks to be able to access the images they need for any particular holiday or time of year, the stock photographer has to be thinking ahead.



At the end of the school year, take a few photos of the busses and kids with book packs so the shots are up on stock sites by the time back-to-school advertising begins, say somewhere around the middle of July. A big fan of the summer months, it really bugs me that the flip flops and swimsuits leave the store racks so soon. But that’s when the power of economic psychology begins its work on the mass market.


We seem doomed to mental battle with the forces of the media’s marketing monster. I’m just as vulnerable. And I know better. Sort of. I know that the jingle I heard on Halloween night was heard by zillions of people who didn’t think “oh god, they are starting with the bells already?”. They thought “hmm, maybe my dad would like that scarf.”

Despite my feelings about winter and the rushing of the season, I benefit from it. People who create these ads, somewhere in their air conditioned offices back in August was developing a Christmas ad campaign to sell whatever it is and started looking for “holiday ornaments” or “twinkling lights” or even “relaxing cup of tea with holly berries” and click, selected my image from the stock photography website, and click, I benefited from the holiday rush and the commercialism of Christmas.


In turn, like a circle of life thing, I took the pennies I made on the sale of that photo and added it to the pennies I made on the sale of “holiday ornaments in the snow” and “pinecone” and went shopping.

Maybe my dad would like that scarf . . .

Happy Halloween: Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia

Being the day before Halloween, it’s perfectly acceptable to be thinking about the creepiest experiences you’ve ever had. One of the most recent of mine was on a recent trip to Philadelphia. First trolley stop on my list: the Eastern State Penitentiary.

It’s located right near the Museum of Art – home of the “Rocky” statue. Pretty darn near downtown.



The first thing I noticed was that it’s in a neighborhood. A neighborhood where people live and drive and walk their dogs. This evil history, just set amongst the townhouses.



We walked in from the street into the gift shop and paid for our admission. There’s an audio tour you can get so that you can listen to different parts of the story where ever you are in the complex. Many parts of it are narrated by Steve Buscemi. We got our headsets on and started off.

It was really hot that day and stepping into the first spoke of the wagon wheel shaped set of buildings was at first refreshing. Then your eyes become accustomed to the dimness and focus on the corridor for what it is: cell after cell, door after door, a place in history where the worst offenders where kept.

We learned that in its earlier years, it was a model for prisons around the world. It was the Pennsylvania System and was based on the true concept of “penitence”. Inmates were kept completely solitary, not seeing another human being for months or years at a time. Even while being led into their cells, their heads were covered. It was “confinement in solitude with labor” and worked extremely well for years.



I found the extensive corridors mesmerizing.



I had seen one of the ghost shows do a visit of this place, declaring it haunted. This place, on a catwalk across the second level, was the area of the most paranormal activity. I found that out after we went, but recall feeling, as I stood on the catwalk, that I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I took a few photos and hurried back down.

There are artist installations throughout. One is in homage to the many cats who moved in after the prison was closed in the early 70’s and the man who continued to feed them. There are plaster cats in various poses throughout.



Another artist’s installation had these small models of cell and prison life. I found this one extremely unsettling.

Women were incarcerated in separate wings.

Al Capone spent some time in here. His cell was outfitted in the finest of the time.

Mostly, what struck me, as a photographer, was the age and decay, the texture and ruin, the glimpses of lives lived in this place. Men, women, sleeping, eating, living here in these small rooms, doing penance for their crimes.

The aging provides some beautiful terrible texture to these walls. So pronounced in some places that the layers of paint curled inches away from the surface.

One of my favorite musicians, Sting, used this dimension as a backdrop for an album cover shoot.

Another creepy place in the prison was the hospital, although we could not enter the actual rooms, the implication of disease and death hung heavily in that part of the prison.

This is a scary and fascinating place.

With some unusual and unexpected beauty.

When you are here in Philadelphia, come and check this place out. It’s really worth a few hours of your time to understand the evolution of the prison system in this country and the power of this place.











You can read all about the history and check out the plans for this year’s Halloween.

http://www.easternstate.org/