Our house looks like a toystore exploded and all of its toys landed on our floors and in our closets and shelves. Feet bruised from stepping on Legos (I KID YOU NOT, THEY ARE THE DEVIL’S TOYS) right before sitting on cars and pencils that my daughter has strewn all over the sofa. Having kids is messy. So, so frustratingly, joyfully messy. Our house is rarely orderly. But oh, it is a happy house. Toys. Books. Fairy lights everywhere, because my daughter loves them (it was one of the first things that she responded to and pointed at when she was little…r). Boldly colored playmats, because they’re safe. Drawings, mine and hers (I have a wall in the kitchen that’s dedicated fully to her art; it’s Her Gallery and I regularly curate it with newer paintings). And rainbows, of course. Always rainbows. On her bed, their clothes, her boots, her…
What day is it? What week is it? Is it April 29- No, it’s May already. I’m in my 8th? 9th? week of isolation and social distancing. I’m doing OK, so are the kids. I’ve taken up baking the past few weeks. I mean, I used to bake muffins and cookies all the time, but now I actually really find it very therapeutic. I’m trying to enthuse my daughter into helping me. Seems to be working, although she’s learning from her dad that his version of “helping” is licking out the bowl. But I digress. I’m just glad it’s something we can do together during what-used-to-be-her-nap-time. As soon as I’m able to work out how, I’ll try and snap some decent photos of what we’re doing together there. My little covert Disney Princess has been posing for some photos for me last week, and she’s LOVING it. I’ll be sharing…
While I’m still navigating this strange, new, smaller world of ours, I’m trying my best to also keep my creative juices flowing. I can’t say I’m working on profound photographs at the moment. I’m very limited in what I can do in that respect. Having 2 kids under 4 is definitely making actively shooting new work challenging. And my studio space is non-existent. Before Covid-19, we started re-doing the entire house. My former studio space – the attic – is now the master bedroom. We were in the middle of working out a solution for me to have a different studio space in our house to work when shit happened. So my equipment is for the most part still boxed up, and I don’t have much room or time to really shoot conceptual work. But for one of my more important yet still untitled projects (the one where I shoot…
Every morning I wake up with the sun lighting up the bedroom. Earlier every morning until we set the clock forward again at end of the month. Spring is around the corner, finally, after a winter that was so rainy, our grass patch in the garden is a moss patch now. And every morning I feel momentarily blissful and excited about what the day could bring. And then I remember. Oh. Right. Corona. The day will bring continued climbing numbers and more people to mourn. 24hr news cycles, speeches from world leaders. Staying the FUCK home and being glad I know HOW to work from home with kids. Worrying about loved ones that can’t stay home and feeling overall very humbled. Batch cooking and doing inventory like a fucking restaurant. And putting up a brave face for two tiny but secretly highly intuitive little children. I am scared. I’m not…
Flowers, I think, make for beautiful subject matter in photography. But flower photography is incredibly saturated – there are trillions of amazing photos out there, a lot of them are photographed so well, too. But I still wanted a piece of it. I wanted to make it one of my main subjects in stock photography. Because for me, it’s an “easy” subject to photograph, being bound at home pretty much most of the time right now, what with little kids whose naps don’t overlap except for maybe one hour every day. Flower photography is something I can do. But being a creative photographer, I wanted to do something different and started using flowers as a subject for experimental and abstract photography. I’ve got a gallery of the stuff up on Stocksy already, but am not bored yet with trying out different techniques and different filters. The effects continue to inspire…