Soul Searching

On Getting a Good Rest

This week I’ve been in the hospital for another procedure.  A minor one, one of the things we keep trying in order to postpone the inevitable “major” one.  I’ve been in and out of the hospital so much over the past twenty years that it really doesn’t phase me anymore.  Hospitals don’t scare me, heck in my first career I used to work in them for a living.  I’m no longer concerned about my modesty, about the parade of strangers that will see all my lady parts.  Because really I bet they’ve seen worse.  I do still look away when they stick me with needles though.  Most times it doesn’t even really hurt, it’s just that I don’t want to see it.  Looking away takes away that moment when I might wince in anticipation of the stick.

But this time another thought went through my head as I prepared to spend the day in the hospital.  “Wow”, I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to get a good rest.”  What has happened in my life that has me actually looking forward to going to the hospital because I’ll get some sleep?  Parenting, that’s what.  Parenting is exhausting.  I think at the hospital I will have time to myself, time to sleep at will, and people will wait on me.

And I was right and it was good.  That glorious sleep medicine was ice-cold when it started coursing through my veins but in a couple of seconds I really didn’t care anymore.  Heck, in a couple of seconds I didn’t even know I existed anymore.  And some time later, I don’t have any concept of how long, I woke up to a nurse saying “Hello” and asking me how I felt.  “I feel good,” I said.  Now let me go back to sleep.

This bed they’ve got me in is amazingly comfortable and warm.  Are the blankets heated?  Maybe.  Later the nurse comes in and remarks on how quiet I’ve been.  That’s because I’ve lain here snuggled into to these warm cozy blankets soaking in the quiet and the stillness and the deep uninterrupted sleep.

And although I’m fine, I debate pretending I’m not just so I can hide out here in the solitude a little bit longer.  But I can’t.  Parenting calls.

iPhone Processing:  Shot with Hipstamatic:  Americana Lens, Claunch 72 Monochrome film.
April 18, 2012
Roy G
iPhoneography, Photo Tips & Tricks

Putting Your iPhone Photos Together to Tell a Story

The big news on the social networking scene this past week was Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram, a mobile photo sharing app used by 40 million people, me included.  Lots of people are up in arms over this and think Facebook is going to kill Instagram.  There will certainly be changes over time, some for the bad but maybe some for the good.  Facebook isn’t the devil people, it’s just a social network, not life or death.

But this isn’t a post about the future of Instagram, plenty of other people have covered that extensively.  This is about continuing to take lots of iPhone photos and using Instagram as a platform to collect and share them.

Sharing individual photos with Instagram has become a major part of how I tell the stories of my everyday life. But sometimes, pulling together multiple photos into a collage is an even more powerful way of telling a story. You can group a collection of photos with a similar theme or share the who, what, why, and where of a special event as a single “storyboard.”  Check out Susannah Conway’s beautiful site for an excellent example of this. She hasn’t said a word but just by looking at this series of images as a whole, you feel like you know what she’s been up to.

There are a number of tools that I’ve used to create collages with my iPhone photos.  And, most of these work just as well with non-iPhone photos.

From the iPhone or iPad

Diptic and PicFrame are both great apps for creating photo collages directly on your iPhone or iPad.  They have very similar templates, work basically the same way, and cost the same.  So for me, this is pretty much a toss-up.  You can’t go wrong with either.  Both allow you to export high-resolution photos which can then be shared out through Instagram.  I created the image above using PicFrame.

From Flickr

With Instagram, you can easily share your photos to Flickr.  Once the photos are in Flickr, you can use a program like Mosaic Maker from Big Huge Labs to create a basic grid collage out of individual photos, photosets, or tags.  I used this last year to create monthly summary collages of my 365 project.  I don’t really use this much anymore though because all my photos aren’t in Flickr.

From Your Mac

First, if you’re taking lots of photos on your iPhone you’re using iCloud to back them all up, right?  Good.  This means they’ll already be on your Mac in iPhoto ready to export or do whatever you want with them.

I use Adobe Lightroom to organize and manage all my photos.  It’s also where I do 90% of my editing.  One of the things you can do with Lightroom is leverage the Print module to create collages because you can “print” to JPEG.  This excellent tutorial by Jay Watson shows you how to create a diptych with the Lightroom Print module.  You can easily extrapolate this to create whatever type of collage you want.  And, you can save any templates you create for future use.  For example, I used Jay’s method to create the collage I used in this post.

Photoshop though is the clear winner for me if you want to get really creative with photo collages.  It might be a little more work but the results are worth it as you have complete control over the design.  To make life A LOT easier, I highly recommend checking out the photo layouts by Pugly Pixel.  She offers some photo layouts as freebies and others for a very nominal fee.  And her web site is loaded with tutorials on how to use them with Photoshop.  Everything I know about designing with Photoshop, I’ve learned from her.  The collage of Instagram photos that I used in this post was created using a Pugly Pixel Photoshop template.

Finally, if you don’t have Photoshop or Lightroom but have a Mac OS X 10.7 or later, you can get the wonderful PicFrame (same app as for the iPhone) from the App Store dirt cheap.

Creating collages not only helps to tell a story, but, as a bonus, it also saves you LOADS of time when you’re trying to include lots of photos in a blog post.  Inserting a set of images as a single photo in a blog post is so much less painful than trying to insert and align numerous images.  Much less painful.

Thanks to Nanette who asked a question that inspired me to write this.

April 16, 2012
Inspiration

Links for the Weekend

I‘m beginning to think these Links for the Weekend posts are providing interesting insight into what’s on my mind during the week. Throughout the week I collect various links in the wonderful tool Evernote. It’s not until Thursday night that I weed though what I’ve collected and post those that filter to the top. Granted I did an Easter theme last week, but this week as I was putting these together I also noticed a theme. I didn’t even realize it but I’d collected an assortment of links about society’s pressure on women to be perfect with regard to body image in particular.

I’m loving this article about actress Megan Fox and her plastic surgery, at the ripe old age of 25. When someone already this good-looking feels like they aren’t good enough, sheesh.

What happens to 3 out of 4 girls after leafing through a fashion magazine for 3 minutes. (via Jet)

I’ve got a big nose. Here’s to learning to love my big nose.

If you didn’t already know that the beautiful people aren’t as perfect as they seem, see these supermodels without makeup or Photoshop.

Brené Brown’s excellent TED Talk on Listening to Shame. “Shame, for women, is this web of unobtainable, conflicting, competing expectations about who we’re supposed to be.”

Model Lily Cole wipes off her make-up as she questions perfection.

And my hero of the week, actress Ashley Judd, who wrote an excellent op-ed in response to the media’s speculation over her ‘puffy’ appearance. You can also watch her speak out on the issue in a NBC Nightly News interview. And just today, Ashley and The Daily Beast have taken the debate even further by asking women to share their ‘puffy face’ moments.

Have a happy weekend. You’re beautiful just the way you are.

xx

April 13, 2012
Soul Searching

10 Things

Today marks the start of another year of life for me on this big planet, my 43rd year.  When did I get this “old” inching closer and closer to middle-aged?  I try think back to when I was a kid and my parents were the same age I am now.  They seemed so mature and grown up and I couldn’t imagine being as old as 43, that was just so far away.

But it’s here now and I’m glad it is because, as my grandmother always used to say, “it’s better than the alternative.”  I don’t really feel old, maybe chasing a two-year old around at this stage keeps me young.  In many ways I don’t feel like I’ve changed.  I haven’t suddenly started listening exclusively to classical music and still enjoy keeping up with the latest hits.  But these days expensive red wine fills my glass instead of cheap keg beer, even if one or two glasses are more than enough.  And, I’ve got plenty of fine lines and grey hair and need glasses or contacts to see pretty much anything further than a foot away from my face.  Thank goodness for the miracles of refraction and hair color.

Even now though, as I’m effectively in my third “career,” I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m still searching for meaning and passion and the things that get me excited about getting up in the morning. The good news is that with age comes knowing that you don’t have to decide at the age of 20 or 30 or 40 what you want to do for the rest of your life.  There is always time to learn and grow and change.

And so to mark the beginning of a new year, I thought I’d share a few things that maybe you don’t know about me.

  1. Me and exercise, it’s a roller-coaster relationship.  I’ll go for a year without doing a thing and then train up for some goal like a 10K run or a 150 mile charity bike ride.  But I struggle to make it part of my every day life.
  2. Getting jiggy with it on the dance floor until you work up a sweat.  That’s some great exercise and great fun.
  3. In my imagination I’m a really good cook.  But in reality, my execution is just never really quite there. However, I can cook an amazing chili and am a whiz at clean-up duty.  So if anyone wants to come over and do all the cooking, I’ll do all the cleaning.
  4. I’m afraid to travel anywhere there might be questionable sanitation or access to toilets, certainly a side effect of the Crohn’s.  I feel the same about camping, staying over at other people’s houses, and sharing hotel rooms with friends.
  5. Madonna is one of my favorite artists and I’m not ashamed to say it.  I’ve been with her since the beginning, since the 80s when I tried to dress like her.  And whether you like her or not, you can’t deny that she’s a strong independent woman who’s not afraid to speak her mind and re-invent herself.
  6. I worry every day that I’m not a good enough parent, partner, friend, daughter, you name it.
  7. I have walked on fire.  I have walked barefoot across a bed of hot coals at a corporate team building event. It makes me wonder, how can I do stuff like this yet not trust the courage of my own convictions on a daily basis?
  8. I love movies and am a total sucker for a good romantic comedy.  Horror movies, not so much.  Refuse to watch them.
  9. I’m not afraid of public speaking in front of a large groups of people.  But put me at a dinner party and I’ll be completely overwhelmed by bigger personalities.  Being quiet and reserved doesn’t mean I’m unfriendly, I’m just introverted and shy.  It takes a while, and maybe a couple of drinks, to pull me out of my shell.
  10. After failed attempts at IVF, my little man arrived the natural way in my 40th year.  Among other things, that’s why he’s my little miracle.  Something I never thought would happen.
April 10, 2012
Gratitude

Things I Want To Remember

How is it that all of a sudden I have a child who talks to me in full sentences?  I look at him now, this little chatterbox who continually narrates his life and creates dialog between his toy trains, and I can barely remember the baby who just laid on the floor mute.

I want to remember him

…placing the football as close as possible to the goal and then kicking it in.  Goal!

…having the confidence to raise his hand and shout out the answer in a group of kids.

…lifting his arms to get sprayed with Daddy’s deodorant and then giggling with absolute delight.

…roaring like a dinosaur repeatedly at me.  He roars, I roar back, he laughs.  His roars are much better than mine.

…showing me the picture he made at school of a “Lion” that was “smiling.”

…deciding that licking mummy’s face is a really fun game.

…standing up in front of the entire class and singling Twinkle Twinkle Little Star all by himself.

…telling me about his day on the car ride home after school.

…moving over on the see saw to make room for his friend saying “I make a space.”

…desperately trying to hold his friend’s hand on the walk home from the park.  She wanted nothing to do with it and resisted as long as she could.  But he was persistent and she finally gave in.

…telling me I’m a “bossy lady” after a phrase he picked up from Thomas the Tank Engine.  I find this funny as I’m not very bossy at all.

…playing hide and seek with his toes in the sandpit.  I cover them up with sand and then we try to find them.  Peep-o.

…eating his ice cream cone from the bottom up.  Me, struggling not to intervene to just let him make a mess.

…asking me to put my arms around him for a snuggle.

 

April 9, 2012