OK, it seems like there’s enough interest, so i’m going to host photography project #3.
Learn more about the idea of having a sober hobby here. See the results from project #1 here and project #2 here.
I’m thinking that there might be a few other sober chicks out there looking for a new hobby, or are trying to find a way to revive an old hobby. So if you want to join Christina and me, and take a few pictures, i think we could have some fun! This is open for anybody, you don’t have to be a fancy ass photographer. No inner critic allowed. Are you ready?
Assignment #3 Bikes Bikes, racing or mountain bikes, tricycles, or even motorized… this can be an inside or outdoor photo.
DEADLINE: Sunday, June 23 @ 12 noon Eastern.
The format is open: black and white, filters, cropping, all OK. You can use your camera phone or a nice camera.
The photo must be original, and taken AFTER the assignment is received (like, no going through past pictures taken, it has to be new).
If you suck at photo adjustments or cropping, send it anyway with a note that you’d like me to adjust.
Send as LARGE a file size as you can manage (up to 12MB per image). Don’t reduce for size. the bigger the better.
Um, you have to be sober …
One entry per person per assignment (think of the size of my inbox!)
NOTE: Find some bikes, take the picture. It’ll turn out better than you think it will. This is a fun project, you remember fun right? I learned all about fun by doing this with Christina.
When Christina and I started this sober photography project, i would send her the assignment and she would (spontaneously) send me back her picture. Like, usually the same day. And she was so freaking excited. For the first assignment, I did my picture right away, too. But something happened to me with the bubble picture.
and maybe you can relate.
I suffered from a regular problem of mine. In my Job #1, I am a designer. So (unfortunately) I can imagine an idealized idea of a ‘bubble’ picture in my head, and it was something that I was going to have to stage in a café with a bottle of water, and a glass and a straw, and sunlight, and a piece of lemon. I could imagine the final image right down to the kind of glass I wanted. and the angle of the straw.
So to take a picture in a café, this means I will have to leave my house (!), have a sunny day (!), and have the right background (!), etc. On the day in question, I asked my husband at about 2 pm if he could stop working and come with me to the café to take my bubble picture, because i would feel too nervous pulling out my big stooopid camera, if alone at the table in front of a glass of water.
He rightfully said no, he had to work.
Right there I realized that I do this all the time with hobbies. While I do good work for clients, I know that “good enough is good enough.” Unfortunately I often suck at applying the concept in my personal life. I am typically someone who does things at the end of the deadline period, rather than at the beginning. I’m never late, and I never need an extension, BUT I do (often, every day) wait until things are more perfect.
Should i do the dishes now or after the next thing? Vacuum first or dust first? Like is there a right way to do any of this stuff, so long as it gets done. and for fuck’s sake, it’s an online anonymous photography project that was – at that time – between me and ONE other person, the lovely christina. Yeah, seems like the right time to over think…. not.
I do get stuff done, but i also think first (for a long time) about the right way to do it. the most efficient way. This is useful in my business life. It perhaps has no place in the world of fun.
Faced with a FUN project, a hobby thing, and I pulled out all of my same perfectionistic ideas. And particularly with artistic things (because i’m a designer), I have an idea in my head of what i want the result to be, and I am often frustrated when the final creative artsy-project result does not match the vision I had in my head. Like, I can picture what I want a painting or a photo to look like, but I can’t create it because of limited talent, limited time, or limited patience.
So when I realized that i was having this anti-fun-thought-process about the bubble picture, I emailed Christina and said: “I am going to shoot my bubbles picture TODAY. no matter what. just to begin to teach myself a lesson. I’m glad we’re doing this together. I’m not sure what you’re learning, but I’m learning a lesson about hobbies and perfectionism. Just enjoy it, Belle. stop trying to make it into ‘something’ …”
So I took my camera out for dinner where I was meeting friends. I ordered bottled water, and asked for a tall glass and a straw. It did NOT look like the image i had in my head. And now I have a table of people staring at me. I take the picture, claiming some “photography project,” and then the dinner continues.
When I get home, I open up the image, flick some switches in Adobe, and come up with something I like.
In fact, I like it a lot. I send a copy to Christina AND I wait up late until my husband gets home so that I can show him my bubble picture.
It has, yes, shockingly, turned out better than the one i originally envisioned.
And for lots of reasons, I’m re-learning that HOBBIES are supposed to be FUN and are not meant to be PERFECT, and not every picture has to SAY SOMETHING, and not every bad image is really bad once you whack some Adobe Lightroom on it… I may be also learning that with photography, at least for me, any picture is better than NO picture. and that adobe lightroom can make an average picture much improved.
Original Image
Original image (good enough!)
Photo post-processing
Finished image (happier than i thought i’d be!)
[*PS if anybody gives a rat’s ass about how adobe lightroom works, i’d be happy to share … or show you how to use free online software to achieve basically the same results…. anyway, lemme know]
and as I wrote in the blog comments a couple of days ago: “… that might be the KEY right there — just do it. don’t wait to be amazing. just have fun … I think as boozers we’ve forgotten about fun : ) it’s *where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter*. Fun is where there is no grade, there is no judgement, there is no competition. It’s when you play Pictionary without keeping score. It’s when you play Monopoly but lend your neighbor money so you can keep playing. With fun, there is no one-upping, there is no monetary gain, there is no impressing anybody. There’s just fun. Yes, and Yes, and Yes!”
Oh yeah, fun. who knew i’d have to re-learn how to have fun. who knew I could learn it taking pictures?
And I got this in my inbox: “I don’t know what I am learning from this but I do know that it is providing a frisson of excitement that is lacking as I adjust to a life without so many bubbles.”
Happy Sunday 🙂
Team 100 update: 110 members, welcome to Sterling (3), Jessica (4), and Noeleen (1). Celebrations for Lynda and Mr. Lynda (90), Whineless (61), DDG (90), Brandy (40), Mr. Belle (60), Katie & Rachel (7), Christina (71), Debra (140), Diane (71), Leah (35), Sam (10), Carolyn (21), Catkin (7), Gindy (71), Tiffany (10), Meka (11), Overndout (7). Welcome back to Lurker M (7).
i have an idea to write something long and boring tomorrow about what i think I have learned about myself in doing this photography project, but i’m wondering what you think… no really i want to know. For everyone who has participated in this bubbles photo project (or if you sent in an image for the first one), I’m wondering what you think you’re ‘learning’ in doing this … post a comment.
Here are a few ideas:
Katherine: “Blowing bubbles in chocolate milk! I haven’t done this since I was a kid. I made a mess and had fun doing it. Oh and it was delicious! … Thank you (and christina) again for creating this photography project. This is the best “recovery” homework! I would never be over here blowing bubbles in my chocolate milk and giggling.”
Christina: “This so much fun! Thanks to this project you get to see things you did not pay attention before, you are more attentive ! I enjoy it so much. Belle had a great idea to build this project and the more the better!”
~~
Assignment #2 Bubbles.
Thanks to everyone who sent in pictures, this post is now closed to new submissions.
If you want to join in for the next assignment, stay tuned 🙂
Holy site traffic, batman! Yesterday’s Sober Morning Photo post already has 1,500+ views! And the pictures, they’re just lovely, oui? This whole project is way more fun than i ever imagined. And yes, ready for round 2?
Learn more about the idea of having a sober hobby here. See the results from Assignment #1 here.
I’m thinking that there might be a few other sober chicks out there looking for a new hobby, or are trying to find a way to revive an old hobby. So if you want to join Christina and me, and take a few pictures, i think we could have some fun! This is open for anybody, you don’t have to be a fancy ass photographer. No inner critic allowed. Are you ready?
Assignment #2 Bubbles Your photo can be bubbles in any form — food, people, puddles, bath. And let’s say, for the sake of clarification, no beer or alcohol!
DEADLINE: Saturday, June 15 @ 12 noon Eastern.
The format is open: black and white, filters, cropping, all OK. You can use your camera phone or a nice camera.
The photo must be original, and taken AFTER the assignment is received (like, no going through past pictures taken, it has to be new).
If you suck at photo adjustments or cropping, send it anyway with a note that you’d like me to adjust.
Send as LARGE a file size as you can manage (up to 12MB per image). Don’t reduce for size. the bigger the better.
Um, you have to be sober …
One entry per person per assignment (think of the size of my inbox!)
NOTE: I’ve given this assignment a short deadline on purpose. If you’re anything like me (and you are, right?) you will want to be perfectionist about this. You’ll have an idea in your head of the of the Perfect Bubble Picture and you’ll wait to try to stage that image. Don’t 🙂 Find some bubbles, take the picture. It’ll turn out better than you think it will. This is a fun project, you remember fun right? I learned all about fun by doing this with Christina. And right on this Bubbles assignment, I got ‘stuck’ in my head trying to get a perfect picture… then i remember it was supposed to be fun …
Here is Christina’s photo to get you started:
Team 100 Update: 106 members, welcome to Pip (day 5), Overndout (3), SugarRush3 (4), and Carol (2). Happy days to Lilly (40), Anne (31), Julie (208), Lauren (80), Sunny Sue (99), Roxanne (50), KT (45), Debbie (30), Lurker B (8), LilyUK (40), Paula (15), JG (40), Colleen (41), Nancy (10), Helene, Leah & Elle (31), Rebecca (81), Julz & Quill (15), Meka (7), and me day 347.
So one of the things that drinking does, is it sucks up our time. Every night beginning at 6 pm (or earlier!), after the first glass of booze, we descend into a pit of un-productivity! That dinner i was going to make turned into potatoes and nothing else. The plans i had to clean the bedroom closet turned into 3 hours of watching A&E’s Intervention. Drinking squeezes out other activities. There just isn’t time. or energy. or brain space.
And so once we get sober, there’s this vast time called ‘evening’ that we have to fill. And some weird things have been known to happen. Like going for groceries after dinner. Like going to dinner and then going to a late movie. Just as recently as last Friday, my husband and I left to go and walk to dinner at 10 pm, not getting home till after midnight… just out walking around the city, enjoying the (finally) beautiful weather. I can assure you there’d have been NO walking to dinner at 10 pm if i was drinking…
One of the other things that can happen to ‘fill time’ is that our passions and hobbies come back. Used to be a writer, a dancer, a runner. Used to make jewelry, write romance novels. Always wanted to learn Spanish, walk a marathon, get tenure.
And then there’s Christina. I asked her what her hobbies and passion were that she could resume now that she’s sober.
Here’s what our emails looked like over a couple of days:
Christina: I wish I had a hobby, something I was passionate about…
Me: OK, let’s get you a hobby then. want to do some homework about this? I’ll do it with you at the same time 🙂
Christina (the next day): Still Sober and thinking of my homework, hobbies. Will come up with a list of things i like to do.
Me: How are you doing on the idea of hobbies? shall we brainstorm… I’ll do this too. when you were 9-10-11-12 years old, what kinds of things did you do for fun … I used to play songs and then try to play them on the guitar or make my sisters sing them (thinking we’d be a band someday). I also always had a pen and paper with me, was a regular Harriet the Spy. I loved puzzles, and bought crossword puzzle books all the time (funny now I like jigsaw puzzles and suduko, so that hasn’t gone away) … I’m a half-decent photographer who doesn’t take my camera out often enough (it feels like it’s too heavy/too much work/too much something. probably just inner critic again saying the pictures will be shit). OK, for me it’s puzzles. no inner critic can come out when you’re making a jigsaw puzzle. think I’ll start one tonight. well that helped me! your turn 🙂 [and i did start a puzzle that night and it is very soothing…]
Christina: Thanks for the brainstorm. I love to do million things. Taking pictures, two years ago bought myself a nice Canon DS500 reflex I carry it all the time when travelling. I always dreamt of playing guitar, just one tune, but I never find the time to really take a course. I would love to be able to “pimp” old furniture, there again never tried … Belle thank you for everything you are doing. I never felt so much strength to stay away from booze. I have tried everything before AA, doctors but in vain. This challenge and the sober blogging is the best thing that never happened to me.
Me (the next morning): are you ready for some photography homework? sort of like building up to having a hobby?
Christina: I am READY:-)
And then I sent Christina a little photography assignment, and I told her that I’d do it too.
Then something amazing happened! Not only did Christina do her assignment right away, she started to gush enthusiasm. Then the next day she sent me another photo…
and the Sober Photography Project was born!
I’m thinking that there might be a few other sober folks out there who are looking for a new hobby, or are trying to find a way to revive an old hobby. So if you want to join Christina and me, and take a few pictures, i think we could have some fun! This is open for anybody, you don’t have to be a fancy ass photographer. No inner critic allowed. Are you ready?
Assignment #1 Sober Mornings Your photo can be anything that deals with the early part of the day, sunrises, work commutes, breakfast, etc. My morning usually includes running, coffee, and emails … What does your morning consist of?
DEADLINE: Tuesday, June 11 @ 12 noon Eastern.
The format is open: black and white, filters, cropping, all OK. You can use your camera phone or a nice camera.
The photo must be original, and taken AFTER the assignment is received (like, no going through past pictures taken, it has to be new).
If you suck at photo adjustments or cropping, send it anyway with a note that you’d like me to adjust.
Send as LARGE a file size as you can manage (up to 12MB per image). Don’t reduce for size. the bigger the better.
Um, you have to be sober …
One entry per person per assignment (think of the size of my inbox!)
I will post all of the entries I get in about a week. Then if you like, we can do another assignment.
What do you think? Here are two ideas on Sober Mornings to get you started:
Christina’s view on the way to workBelle’s morning
