FarAway - #03

The original picture.

Love the length and deepth of field in this shot

I met up with Melody yesterday to chat about #Project40 and I told her what I had in mind for my #FarAway self-portrait picture.  I had Noordhoek beach in mind because of the vastness of space and that you are able to capture the feeling of distance... of FarAway'ness.  And just like that she said ... "let's go".  It was so impromptu and it was perfect moment for a very quick photo-shoot.  The weather was lovely and Noordhoek was just beautiful.  Melody captured exactly what I had in mind.  Yay... so yesterday I got to play with this image and with some filters... and this is what I came up with.

Love both these filters

I ended up choosing the canvas filter... making it look like a bit of a painting.

It has surpassed my idea for it and the words I would use.
Melody also helped me with some of the word prompts.

I actually love how this spread worked out because it's busy and has lots of detail and words and it's only when you look from #far away, from a bit of distance that you can see it completely.  I think it's how we have to treat life sometimes...  Take a step back... to see clearly.  Sometimes we are so focused on the details that we loose sight of the big picture.  It's in the moving back that we get the perspective... the clarity.
It's in the the looking from a distance, from {afar} that we sometimes find what we have been looking for all along... our dreams, our path and perhaps our destiny which has always been right in front of us - we just couldn't see it.  I know this has been so true for me this year and taking the time to step back has certainly helped me find my way! 

Childhood - #02

I don't actually have any childhood pictures of myself.  Not one.  There weren't many of me as a kid because camera film was so hard to come by in our country at that time but also my mom hasn't passed any down to me yet.  I vaguely remembered I had kept one of my mom's pics of me as a baby.  But after the move, I really couldn't think where it could be.  I felt panicked inside.  I didn't even know where I could start looking...  Long story short - I found my baby photo.  I would be devastated if I had lost this print.  I would really have no way of getting another copy.  Happy to say that this is now scanned in and saved on disc too.

For some or other reason this topic has evoked some deep emotions in me.  Maybe it has to do with my lost childhood, maybe lost dreams.  I feel a little detached from this baby girl and a part of me wishes I could know her and what was going through her mind.  I feel like I don't know her one bit.  I keep wondering if she was anything like my two girls were at this age.  It kind of lined up with a prophetic word that I got over 16 years ago which only started making sense to me in the last month or so.  So I guess in many ways, I have been ready to face this...  Whilst working through Walking in this World - I noticed I had trouble answering some of the questions about my childhood dreams and hopes.  And one of the questions I had been asking myself this year is why has my life seemed so {one dimensional}.  I seemed to lack direction, dreams and hopes and that pretty much just went with the flow of life and where others felt I should be going.   But never really choosing for myself.  A thread that has continued through my life.  Always looking to others to affirm my directions or who I am but never really knowing for certain for myself.  When was it exactly that I stopped hearing the call on my life. Or maybe was that I never felt worthy enough to be called to anything of value or was it that I was never really brave enough to respond to it.  Has fear ruled me through the years or has it been a kind of apathy because I felt I had no choices.  This has been my journey this year of self discovery. Discovering who I am and what my true dreams really are.  Choosing to be brave even when I don't feel particularly brave inside.  To stop hiding.  Hiding behind the past, hiding behind what life throws.  Choosing what I want to do rather than what I feel obligated to do.  But most of all... I have been listening... and trying to respond to what is calling me right now.

Unspoken - #01

"It's in the Unspoken Words that we find our Story" - Jeanne-Marie Webb

I love this picture...

It is subtly reflecting the lines around my eye, that are very much there - a clear indication that I am almost 40, but my eye has never looked more focused. Maybe a bit of a prophetic picture for the year I am having so far. But what is also clear to me is no matter what I say or feel about this stage - there is no stopping this!

I spent two weeks thinking about the theme - {unspoken} and what it means to me.  It's pretty powerful... the {unspoken} words...  So much can happen and be said without words... A gentle smile, kind gestures, a look.  As I switched off a little this year and cut myself off a bit from the noise, the chaos and the demands of life.  I tried to find my story as I silenced all the voices {screaming out what they thought my story should be}.  It's in the quiet place and the {unspoken} words that I have started to discover {me} again.  I guess when we are slow to speak and silence the voices, it's where we find the spacious place... to Hear. to Listen. then Respond.

Introducing Project40

I am 7 months and 7 days away from turning the BIG 4.0. I am both loving and afraid of all I am discovering in turning 40 and that in many regards, I feel like my life has only really just began and other times my life seems to be happening too fast for my liking. My girls are growing up at a pace that takes my breath away. I am finding grey hairs, very long grey hairs in my mop of long hair. My body shape and face is changing every time I look in the mirror and at times I love that fact that I am growing to accept my now womanly body and shape and my new sense of style that goes with accepting oneself, perhaps for the first time in my life.  There was a time as a young mother, I felt people saw me more as the aupair to my girls than their mother but now there is no mistaking that I am their mother. There is something strangely beautiful in that too. In my workshop book that I got this year, Unfurling, Misty Mawn has a whole section on Self Portraits and starts off this section with this quote "I paint self portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best" - Frida Kahlo. I have never painted a self portrait and don't often take pictures of myself, so this will be new ground for me. In a way, I love this quote and this exercise because I think perhaps I have never really known myself at all and for the first time, I am discovering who I really am and I would like to know this new me best. I have decided to do this exercise in doing #40 different self portrait shots and placing them in homemade journal. There are almost 20 theme ideas in the book, which I will use and then I will add to that another 20, as a symbolic journey of me turning 40. The idea has been playing in my mind for a while but last night I couldn't sleep with all the ideas swirling around my head.

I am not taking this {exciting one minute - scary the next} journey alone... my running and creative buddy, Mel is journeying with me... she also turns #40 this year. So we will journey together through our self portraits and see what we find, or rather WHO we find on the other end!