The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Day 12

The story we often tell ourselves is that we aren't good at something. The honest truth though is that we have never even tried. How in the world can we be good without trying?

Day 17

A couple posts ago I wrote about my art journey this fall. At the end I shared a bit about wanting to learn to draw. I was convinced that I wasn't good at drawing, but in all honesty I hadn't tried since I was ten. Our vacation up north motivated me to try again, at the age 50. Once we were back home I had to find a way to keep trying, even without the inspiration of the place I love.

Day 15

I seem to do really well with 30 Day challenges. November conveniently had 30 days. I decided to do 30 Days of Drawing. I even went bold and posted my daily drawing on Instagram, hoping that a few of my friends would keep me accountable.

Day One

It was scary in the beginning to put myself and my lack of skill out there. But somebody has to be brave and show others that even if you don't start out good, you can come a long way in 30 days with a commitment to daily practice. It wasn't a big time commitment each day. On the average I probably spent about thirty minutes per drawing. Some days I had more time and some days I was lucky if I had ten minutes. But it was the showing up every day that mattered, not how much time I  had.

Day 19

With any project there is the dreaded middle. I would have a few really good days, and then it felt like I took three steps backwards. The above drawing was suppose to be a moody stone barn, but to me it feels like a slightly moody Caribbean stone house. Not what I was going for.

Day 14

I am someone who needs to have an image in front of me to draw. But I also have seven years in as a photographer, I am image driven. Besides my own photographs, which I drew from quite a bit, Pinterest is a fabulous source. Oh the rabbit holes you can fall into. I swore I would never draw people because I wasn't good at it. But...I had never tried.

Day 9

Some of my ladies have been drawn with the X and Y axis and reference points and some have been outlined with my Lightbox, I am completely fine with that. Seeing how far I have come in thirty days, I know I will get there with them too. We all have to start where we are and grow from there.

Day 27

I am also completely in love with charcoal.

Exciting News

Today, Sunday December 2, we bring Atticus home. Let the adventures begin.

Second: I was contacted this week by Dirty Footprints Studio about teaching a small segment of a summer on-line course for them. You can just image how dumbfounded I felt when I read the email. Me? Are you serious? The story I am telling myself is that I am not ready for this, I don't know how to shoot a tutorial video. But the truth is that I haven't tried yet, and until I try I don't have any right to say I can't.

The theme for this is Capturing Moments, which are to be brought to fruition in your art journal. I am looking for ideas from you, my friends, about what this theme would mean to you. I am kicking around an idea, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Road to Atticus

On my desk sits a photograph of two golden boys in the prime of their lives. I recently found this photograph in the storage room as I was sorting and purging. My heart paused when I saw it. It was probably put there when it became too painful to look at.

It was October 2014 when we lost the first golden boy. He was 12, old but not too old. I have never been able to fully write about his loss. October 11 marked two years since the loss of the last golden boy. He was only a couple months shy of 14, but he had been slowly slipping away for the last year of his life.

We have lived the last two years with a part-time dog, the grand dog Findley. Findley is the funniest, quirkiest dog you will ever meet, but he is also a geniune joy and blessing.

It took us these two years to heal, to spend some time without a dog, travel, not be tied down. We did all those things. Eventually the heart heals, the wanderlust dies down a bit, and being without isn't fun anymore. Born on October 8, 2018 was a new beginning.

Our new beginning will be coming home at the beginning of December. At first I thought we were crazy to get a puppy going into winter. Potty training, cold and snow didn't seem like a logical mix. But the more I thought about it...when am I home the most? When do I have the most time to devote to potty and all around training? Winter of course.

Then I worried about socialization. The new ideal is for your puppy to have contact with at least one hundred different people before they are sixteen weeks old. Where am I going to find 100 people in the winter? Our downtown of course, with its heated sidewalks. What a great place to walk, get use to different sounds and a wide variety of people and dogs.  Who can resist talking to and petting a puppy?

The first two golden boys were only six months apart, and we took them on many adventures as a family, but two young dogs and me alone didn't go that well. After the loss of the first golden, I was able to take Scout on some day adventures with me, we had such great times. My one regret was that we didn't get to do more before it became too hard for his back legs to keep up. I have many adventures planned for our new boy, so he better like the car. We have places to go and things to explore.

We don't know yet which little golden boy will be ours, there are three boys in the litter. The breeder matches based on what we are looking for, and the personality of the puppy. She has been doing this a long time, so she knows what she is doing. Although...Mallory did ask for a gentle old soul...

Well...He may not be what she asked for, but he is exactly what she needed.

Still, it's hard not to have a favorite. Whoever our new beginning is, his name is Atticus.

The Hour of Homecoming

From the moment we came over the rise, on the roller coaster road that is M-109, in the heart of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I knew I was home. Above us stretched a bright blue sky, on each side of us were sun-bleached sand dunes with tufts of beach grass sprouting from them, and ahead of us sat the most photogenic weathered white barn I had ever seen.  I wasn't a photographer then, just a snapshot taker. I didn't know anything about good light or bad light, composition, POV, the golden hour, ISO; it would be another fifteen years before those words would enter my vocabulary. I just knew I had to get out and take a picture with my pocket-size Fuji film camera.

I have lived in Michigan all my fifty years, never living farther than twenty miles from my childhood home. Somehow though,  I knew that this "up north" place, three hours from where I grew up, was where my heart lived. For twenty-five years I have been trying to figure out what it is about this place, why it captivates me so. With each return, I dig a little deeper into it and into myself.

Our family of three opinionated adults and one sassy golden retriever, just returned from a week of vacation in this place of homecoming.

Vacations tend to fall into one of two camps for me. Either they are vacations of adventure, where I have to figure the place out, consult maps, make wrong turns, get yelled at. Or they are vacations of discovery, where the place is already understood and instead I have time and space to explore who I am in it.

We tend to stay in the same small area every time we go up north, either nestled on the edge of a small lake, or the edge of a golf course. This time, our daughter, one of the opinionated adults, convinced us to try someplace new, father north than we usually stay, located in the middle of farm country, open fields on every side, a step out of our comfort zone. This put me farther from the places that I always photograph, favorite places, another step out of comfort.

Having learned the importance of the "golden hour", I was up before the sun every morning. The sassy golden retriever, hearing the creak of the wooden floorboards, joined me. I would put on my winter coat, my warm paisley rain boots, secure my headlamp to my head, and open the back door to the frozen landscape. We would crunch through the refrozen snow, climb the rise to the west of the house, and wander along the ridge line. He would pretend to track wild animals until he finally did his business. Then, we would turn back toward the warm glow of the house so he could eat and return to bed with my daughter. I would make tea in the white mug I had claimed for the week, write in my journal, then gather my camera gear that was waiting by the door, and head out into the predawn light to scrape the ice from the windows of my car.

To be continued...

Part Two of this will be next week. I have too much I want to say for one post, and too many photographs I want to share. Until then here is a short film of our first day of vacation, you can get a good sense of the farmhouse and area around it.


Leelanau - April 21, 2018 from Sarah Huizenga on Vimeo.

February

The other day while washing dishes, I glanced out the kitchen window at the gray, gloomy, soggy backyard and noticed the silhouette of a robin hop between two spruce trees near the edge of the pond. Seeing that robin hop made me happy for two reasons: First, the hope of spring. Second, I am learning to see movement.

For the past six years, I have trained my eye to look for stillness, actively seeking calm. Don't we all want more calm in our lives?

 As I embark on this film making journey, I am learning to see differently. Short films of still landscapes are not the most riveting to watch.

Findley has been a willing participant in my films, but I have to get over my fear of filming my family, afraid of their reaction to being on film. I am also learning that I can be in the moment and also capture the moment.

If you know anything about me by now, you will know that to me a little knowledge is good, but a lot of knowledge is so much better. In that spirit, I signed up for a second Xanthe Berkeley film class, Make Films: 12, which actually dovetails extremely well with the first class Make Films. This second class expands on what is learned in the first class, and we work on different month long themed projects.

After my summer in the meadow last year, the joy and satisfaction of working on longer projects really took root. I love not feeling rushed, taking the time to tell the story to the best of my ability.

Here is my first project film - the theme is Audio is the Hero...

February was: snowy, filled with friends and a trip up north for a wine tasting weekend, snowy, and a kitchen make-over begun. Hoping March has a little more sunshine and less snow. February 18 was Findley's birthday. He is two already, can you believe it? If we aren't friends on Facebook or Instagram and you haven't seen the slideshow I put together of Fin's first two years you can watch it here...

End Notes

I would love for you to visit my blogging friend Jill Ruskamp here. Jill is taking the Make Films course too. What she is doing with black and white is fabulous, and I have already seen so much growth in her films. She made this one to celebrate her 54th birthday. I will be 50 in June and I want to do something similar. What a great way to document a life event.

The kitchen remodel began this week. Old countertops and backsplash out. New countertops and sink in the next day. Sink hooked up the day after that. Cabinets refreshed on Friday (they look amazing). Backsplash coming next Tuesday. I may have found new pendant lights, that will be determined this weekend. Next steps: electrician, ordering the flooring, new half bath vanity, and order the refrigerator. No going back now.

Mornings with Fin

Most of you will know this face, either from here on my blog or if you follow me on Instagram, and especially if you follow me on Flickr. He has become easy prey for my 365 photography project this winter. If you haven't met him before, this is Findley, my grand puppy. Although he isn't much of a puppy anymore, since he will be turning two in one short month.

I take care of Findley a couple days a week to help break up his monotony while my daughter works. Plus it helps satisfy my dog itch, a least for the moment.

The one problem with these adorable photographs is that you only see one facet of Fin's character. But trust me, there is so much more to Fin, he really is Mr. Personality, and has been from the beginning.

To showcase his true nature, Fin and I have been working on a short film for the past couple of weeks.

Have a watch...
 

This also happens to fulfill the homework assignment for Week 2 of Xanthe's Make Films e-course.

Three years ago, I tried to take a year long Xanthe film course. I never made it past the first month. I realize now why I failed; I was too new into the journey, I was trying to find out who I was. I wasn't confident enough to stand up and do the assignments my own way, I thought I had to do them like everybody else, but I wasn't like everybody else, so I gave up.

Now at the start of 2018, I know who I am, I know my style, I know what I like and what I don't like. I am hungry to learn more, to take who I am and express it in the truest way.

This course is also teaching me why I struggle with sitting down and writing a story, I need a visual story. It's the same story just told in a different way, with a lot less sitting.

I use to be a daydreamer, creating elaborate stories in my head. This helped to make the boredom of my receptionist job tolerable. I would often carry these daydreams into my sleep, my imagination working on its own while I slept. But then motherhood and sleepless nights replaced deep sleep, and I was too tired during the day to daydream anyway. Eventually, if you stop using your imagination, it goes into hibernation. But it can be reawakened, you just have to start using it again, and that is what making films is allowing me to do - use my imagination again.

I love taking a subject or theme and creating the scenes to go with it. I love editing in iMovie. I love the challenge of finding the perfect music to accompany the film. I love how the films capture the essence of people/dogs and places, so much more than a still photograph can. I am also amazed at how much I can say in a one minute film clip.

Well, it's time to start working on my next film, I have some ideas floating around in my head. Stay tuned...

End Notes

My husband I have completed twenty days of our month of Whole 30. I would say by mid-way through week two it became so much easier. There are still a lot of eggs, and a lot of dishes to wash each meal, but it's worth it. All my clothes are fitting looser, and the tight yoga pants are now the only yoga pants that stay up nice and snug. I still miss my chai lattes, and a bit of sweetness in my drinks. I don't miss melty cheese or bread (too much). We definitely are never hungry.

I just completed day 140 of my 365 Photography Project. January has been a little tough with all the cold and snow. I miss being outside.

Also, if you missed it on Instagram here is my Make Films homework/completed film for Week One. 

Fin is starting to demand a higher salary. I guess I will be going back to the Pet Store for some more biscuits.

Have a great week.

At First Glance

At first glance, and let's be honest that's all we will give it, the culture of fast scrolling and double tapping so ingrained in us, we see a dog resting peacefully on a brown couch.

But as we scroll past and do a double tap, did we note what kind of dog is was? What was the material of the couch the dog rests on? Where was the light coming from? What time of day was it?

Twenty pictures further along in the feed, will we even remember we saw the dog?

Trust me, the finger I am pointing at you is also hastily scrolling on the screen on my own device. But  in your haste, in my haste, what are we missing? Are we missing the story, the hint of what lies deeper?

As you scrolled and tapped did you wonder how old the dog is? Did you wonder what his name is? Would you guess that this is a rare moment, the sweet adolescent for once sitting still long enough for me to manually focus on the catch light in his eye? Did you notice his catfish long whiskers?

What about the hint of what lies beyond the dog and the couch? Are you curious enough to run your eyes around the edge of the frame? Curious enough to linger?

I have been trying to be more intentional in my own social media browsing, taking my time to drink in the details, run my eyes along the edge of the frame. Is there something there that intrigues me? I will never know if I scroll at the speed of lightening.

My daughter's former boss and her husband are taking an extended road trip, exploring back roads and local small town eateries. I want to follow their trip. I'm curious to see where they go, make notes for our own future trips. I need to slow the scrolling, take time to linger, see where people are going, read their stories. I want to invest in their stories, I want to invest in my own story.

I want to find my way back to curiosity.

Michigan to Massachusetts - The Highlights Reel

I am always hesitant to share my vacation photos here. I don't want to be that friend that invites you over for wine and cheese, and then locks you in a room with a big-screen television and makes you watch 500 unedited vacation photos. I am fresh out of cheese but enjoy the wine, here's the highlights reel...

Favorite City/Town

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada
First day of vacation and we took the "shortcut" through Canada and Niagara Falls to get to our hotel in Rochester, New York. It was late lunchtime, we were hungry and ready to get out of the car for a while. I remembered my friend Kay telling me to stop in Niagara-on-the-Lake on our way through if we had time. We had time. We had lunch, walked to the lake, discovered the most beautiful cemetery full of flowering trees on the way back to town, and found a parking ticket on our car when we got back. Nonetheless, Glen and I both want to spend more time here, we will just make sure we pay for our parking first next time.

Best Don't Give Up

Watkins Glen, New York
My readers that have been with me for a while will remember a couple of years ago I went to Pennsylvania in the autumn to meet a blogging friend, Andrea, who lives in New Jersey. We were to spend a week photographing the fall colors in the Tioga State Forest area. We had a great half week until she slipped on some wet leaves, fell and broke her leg, going back to New Jersey much sooner than expected. You can read that post here. The day after she broke her leg we were suppose to take a day trip up to Watkins Glen, NY only a little over an hour from where we were staying, obviously we did not go. I stayed close to our rental cottage instead that day, a little afraid to now be on my own. But I had really wanted to go to Watkins Glen to explore the picturesque state park there. A year and a half later, mission accomplished. My husband and I had an extra travel day to explore the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, and Watkins Glen fit wonderfully into the plan. So glad I did not give up my desire to explore this destination.

Favorite Brewery

Rooster Fish Brewing - Watkins Glen, NY
We stumbled upon this brewery late morning on a Sunday, not busy, great variety of craft beer, and amazing window light.

Best Stumble Upon...

Norman Rockwell Museum - Stockbridge, MA
Our vacations tend to always have a theme, this year's theme was Stumble Upon...
I like to have my hotels booked for each night, but I am content to let the days take care of themselves, this does not always work well for my "need to know where he's going" husband, but truly this is often how the best places are found. Such is the case of the Norman Rockwell Museum. It was raining and we had time to kill before ending the day in Boston, so we began looking at the exit attraction signs in the Berkshire area of Massachusetts. I saw a sign for the museum and said to my husband that I would really like to go there, so we did. Best stumble upon ever!
I have always loved Mr. Rockwell's work, but knew very little about him. To see all his covers of the Saturday Evening Post framed and lining three walls of a room was mind blowing, to see the progression of his work, the themes in his work, his consistent color palette, made the artist in me pondering my own work.  We left the museum with four books, a new bookmark for me, and camera rolls full of photos.

Best Conquering Fear Moment

Figuring out the subway in Boston. We live in West Michigan, I drive my car anywhere I want to go. You do not want to drive your car in Boston, you want to walk or take public transportation. We were staying in Cambridge, so a little ways from the city center, we had to figure out the subway to get where we wanted to go. The subway intimidated me, but for that reason I was determined to conquer it. Thankfully our T station was only a five minute walk from our hotel, and my friend Karen gave me the stations we would need to get off at to go where we wanted to go. We only got on one wrong train, but quickly figured it out and got on the right one to get back to our hotel. Fear conquered!

Best Boston Moment

Meeting my blogging friend Karen for coffee in real life. Karen works in the city, and thankfully it worked in her schedule to take part of a morning and meet me for coffee. I love these kind of moments - meeting old friends for the first time!

Craziest Day

Cape Cod, MA
We left Boston and drove to the very end of Cape Cod because I wanted to say I had been to Cape Cod, wanted The Cape Cod National Seashore stamp in my National Park Passport book, wanted to see the ocean, and wanted a lobster roll. We drove through Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island during rush hour traffic looking for a brewery, which we found, but could not find a place to park. Shortly after leaving Providence our car shed the inner wheel well liner on the front passenger side while driving on the busy highway, which my husband had to go retrieve from the side of the highway. During all of this the temperatures ranged from 82 to 99 degrees for the day, all so I could say I have been to the Cape and Rhode Island. My poor husband!

Favorite Botanic Garden

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

Tower Hill Botanic Garden - Boylston, MA
We had a free day before the start of the photography conference I was going to in Southbridge, MA, so my husband Googled nearby attractions and came across Tower Hill Botanic Garden. He said, "We always have good luck at botanic gardens." Who is this man? Amazing bounty of color at this garden, even if it was 85 degrees. I would love to go back on an overcast and much cooler day.

Favorite Footwear

For the last decade, other than my running shoes, my go-to footwear on vacation has been my Chaco sandals. But the past couple of years I have had problems with the straps on hot humid days rubbing on the tops of my feet and giving me blisters. That doesn't make walking the next day enjoyable.
I was searching for something stylish and comfortable, two words that never seem to go together in the footwear world. For once the ads that pop into my feed on Facebook actually held something valuable - a link to these shoes - Taos Moc Star shoes. Perfect for wide feet, have amazing arch support and come in fun colors. Other than the two full days in Boston I wore these shoes all the time. They are the most fabulous shoes.

Favorite Restaurant

Cedar Street Grille - Sturbridge, MA

We ate a lot of places while on vacation, but this was the best. A wide variety of small plate options, each one we tried was awesome, but we highly recommend the lamb meatballs, cod sliders, mac and cheese with pulled bbq pork, although all the mac and cheeses sounded wonderful, and the grass fed beef sliders. Of course pair this with a bottle of local wine. We loved the place so much we returned for a second night. Recommend making reservations!

Favorite Wineries

Taylor Brooke Winery - Woodstock, CT

Give us a free afternoon on vacation and the first thing we will do is Google nearby breweries and wineries. It's not that we have to drink, it is because a winery or brewery done right is one of the best vacation experiences. By done right I mean we want you to take your time, tell us about your winery, tell us what wines are your award winners, and for me you get five stars if you have a wine dog. We will sample the maximum amount of samples and stay to enjoy a glass on the patio. Taylor Brooke got five stars.

Sharpe Hill Winery - Pomfret, CT

Sharpe Hill also gets five stars. A lovely garden setting and your wine samples are brought to you by sweet servers like Amanda. Amanda gets five stars just for putting up with my husband's questions, and being willing to pose for a picture for his new obsession - Instagram. The only thing this place was missing was the wine dog.

The End

Well the wine is gone and the film is coming to a close, so it's time to call it a day. Hope you enjoyed the highlights reel. There were so many stories on this trip, and stories make the best trips. 

Velvet 56 Love

Late last fall, I purchased the Lensbaby Velvet 56. Lensbaby was having a pre-Christmas sale on some of their lens. I have always been intrigued by them, but wasn't sure if I was ready to be that brave and different. The sale was too good to resist (Merry Christmas to me), so I clicked "purchase", and waited for my new lens to arrive.

The demo video that sold me on it, showed beautiful, shallow depth of field portraits of people, hmm... self portraits? My daughter? and of dogs...Findley?

As soon as it arrived via UPS, I sliced open the box and put it on my Canon 6D. Findley...where was Findley? What I wasn't prepared for, was the manual focusing, and I total skipped over the fact that I had to manually set the aperture. Let me say, manually focusing on an energetic puppy, well...the photo says it all.

I slid the Velvet 56 into an empty lens slot in my camera bag, and returned to my 35mm auto-focus lens. The Velvet 56 would stay in the camera bag until this month.

April, a new season, and new subjects to photograph. I dug the Velvet 56 out of the camera bag. I did not go looking for Findley, instead I went to the garden center.

I do get frustrated with not being able to do something well, but rarely do I give up, so I watched some Lensbaby videos and actually learned what to do with the Velvet 56, there was that bit about manually setting the aperture.

A successful outing at the garden center, and I was ready to try the Velvet 56 on a trip. I was tagging along with my husband on a business trip to my favorite part of northern Michigan. A good place to try the lens, on things I know and love, and have photographed many, many times. I was looking for a different approach to these places.

The Velvet 56 stayed on my camera the whole time we were gone. This time the 35mm stayed in the camera bag.

I still have more to learn, more videos to watch, and more practice is needed, but I love the look I am achieving. The Velvet 56 sees the world the way I do - one spot of sharp focus and blurry around the edges.

My husband and I are leaving for vacation in a couple of weeks. We are going through upstate New York, to Boston and to a photography conference in another part of Massachusetts. I have a feeling the Velvet 56 will be getting a lot of use.

Sketches

I signed up for Vivienne McMaster's year long self-portrait photography class Body Peace 2017 when it was first advertised last fall. The first class started January 1st and ran for 15 days, then we had a 15 day break before the second one started February 1st. In my mind this was an ideal schedule; 15 days on, 15 days off to catch up on the few lessons I may have fallen behind on.

I started out strong, as I always do with on-line classes, obediently working on each day's prompt.

The class is intended to help us, especially women, to be more accepting of the body we have right now. Always the rebel in a group, I also choose to use the prompts as starting points for well-thought out, creative self-portraits. Now don't think that I don't have body issues I need to deal with because I do, but for me it is about becoming a better self-portrait photographer as well. It is amazing the details you pay attention to when you are the subject of your photograph.

My self-portrait creative perfectionism meant that I could only shoot with my Canon dSLR, no iPhone allowed. That perfectionism carried me for about three days, after that life got in the way, as it always does. I no longer had an hour each day to set up the perfect vignette. So instead of loosening my criteria and adapting to what life was at the moment, I quit. I didn't do any more lessons for January, and in February when life got even crazier, I didn't even start.

But here's the thing, I'm not a quitter. So when March 1st came around, I opened my Morning Pages journal and did some soul searching:

• I paid for this year long class, so stop wasting the money
• I enjoy the prompts - they make my creative mind start working again
• I love the community and sharing with other classmates
• I need to find a way to adapt

So I slid off my creative high-horse and I got out my iPhone, my GorillaPod tripod for my phone and my remote shutter release and set about doing the daily prompts.

When I was having my weekly Skype conversation with my friend Leon of Sea Blue Lens, I was lamenting to her about lowering my standards but at least getting it done. I also said, the ones I really like I can go back and take with my Canon. Then she said "It sounds like you're doing sketches with your phone". There is was! The artistic term that I needed to make it alright to shoot with my iPhone. I am an artist and I understand things in artistic terms, the term "sketches" made it creative. Thank you Lee, you are a Godsend, in so many ways.

So now I happily get my iPhone out almost every day, some days I have to do a couple prompts to catch up, but I am keeping up. When I have extra time I do get out my dSLR, making vignettes like the one above that actually made Flickr's In Explore, which surprised me to say the least.

But my favorite one thus far is this one, taken with my iPhone while messing around with the grand puppy. There is no way I would have been able to take this with my big camera.

The takeaway - If you need to give something a different name to make it work for you, do it! The most important part is not to quit. You will be creatively blessed by staying the course.