The Summer of Love

I don't know about that title, but it worked with this really cool picture that Maddie took at the beach last week.  She is very creative and has a good eye for photography.  This is totally something I would do -- and yet she had the idea first!  It made me realize I spend so much time doing self-portraits these days that I don't take many other pictures.  Which kind of makes me think that the whole purpose of the self-portrait project might be skewing my intent a bit.  I mean sure, I love to look at pictures of myself (who wouldn't?!!!) but the gallery of my photo album is just one shot after another of me, interspersed with pictures that MADDIE has taken of cool things.  I would share more of them, but she had a fit about this one.  She personally feels that once this hits the Internet, it will get scooped up and used, with no credit to her.  I don't know about that, but she is also a lot like me in terms of knowing that you excel at what you do!  (No, we don't stare at ourselves in mirrors all day, that would be vain.)

Here is a picture I took the other day.  I think the Love picture might be better (shhh, don't tell Maddie, she'll let it go to her head).  I hate how you look at something and see the perfect picture, but when you take it, it doesn't come out as it should.  This is an example of that.  I couldn't figure out how to frame it properly without the tree branch -- and I am still a bit of a purist when it comes to photography and do not believe that Photoshop is the answer to everything.  Every once in awhile I will alter a self-portrait of mine -- and then later think you know, what is the purpose of that?   I am not taking self-portraits so much as an art form as a catalog of a year-in-the-life ... of me!  So it seems ridiculous that I randomly lose lines on my face in the middle of April due to a cool tool!

                               

Here is another picture that Maddie explained to me would have had much better composition if I had included the roof of the building on the left.  I explained that I was trying to portray the view I had -- which was out the window, therefore I wanted it to be framed by the window.  I don't think she agreed. In truth, I think the building to the left takes away from my actual focus -- which is the further building, the Jeep and the tree-lined road.  This one could almost be cropped so that the roof of the building is gone.  Let's try that.

 So what is the verdict?  It is not hugely different but it takes off the sun glare (which I kind of liked) and the top of the window is now gone (again, which I liked).  I do spend a lot of time cropping pictures I must admit, and I think I'd end up liking the first one best because to me the sun glare balanced off the sun glaring on the road.  I think it is interesting that Maddie and I have such different opinions on this.  It will be fun to have her open up my eyes more with photography ... so instead of the summer of love, how about the summer of photography?

Because the love thing ... there's not so much of it in the house right now.  We are on Day Two of summer vacation with both of them home, and I am a wreck.  Patience level sub-zero and dropping, I'm telling you.  They fight constantly, and if they're not fighting and swearing (which is really PISSING ME OFF) then they are good old pals and laughing over stupid things and still driving me nuts anyway.  Now, it's not helping that the weather is a constant, dull and drab gray monotone of boring, maybe it's going to rain, oh wait, is it going to be sunny?  Nope, now it is going to rain, oh, thunderbang, ooops, I see the sun, nope, wait, that wasn't the sun that was some orb in the sky cloaked in clouds.

No!  I am not in a bad mood, I am just in that wrinkle of time where I have lost my life and its comfortable pattern and I have to reinvent the days -- but only this time there are two teenagers staring up at me like little birds in the nest, chirping WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TODAY?

And the thing is, my motherly bird urge is to give them both a good kick and then peer over the edge and watch them fall.  Splat.

No, I am not seeing a therapist.  Why do you ask?

Hmmm ... I had pizza for dinner the past two days in a row, which of course does not qualify as raw food.  Today I plan on being 100 percent raw.  I wonder if my mood will change.  I wonder if the dead pizza food has made me a bad mother bird.  (I am chirping I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE right now).

Yeah ... the summer of love.

Let us pray.