week #1/52: sun birds
Sunlight came through the blinds of our bedroom window, splitting her skin into slats of light and shadow. It reminded me of the first time we kissed, in her parents’ living room, wet from the pool, late afternoon sun beaming through tall windows, my hands on her wet, cold skin. Our bedroom now was not very much unlike the one she grew up in, with its yellow walls and white bedding. She even brought her cork boards, pinned up with old movie tickets, prom pictures, and one of those paper origami birds I used to fold for her.
– Danny, chapter 1, Paper Birds
week 1: and so the project begins?
The idea here, and for the next 52 weeks, will be to see if I can capture a piece of my stories in images. And further, to see if I can illustrate a variety of different story subjects, and continue to do so every week for 52 weeks. Because the idea for my novel series will require one well-planned (and hopefully interesting) image almost every week.
The second idea here is to practice my photography skills. To take better, more interesting, and more adventurous (= less lazy) pictures.
So this one was tricky because it required a very particular time of day, and sunlight, which was much harder to come by (being January) than I assumed. It was mostly cloudy all morning with only these occasional bursts of sunlight that I had to run and grab quickly when they happened. That, and my camera works for bunk in low lighting, and I’m still trying to figure that out.
I ended up taking over 400 shots through the morning (burst mode, people!), and this was the one I narrowed it down to. I chose it for the light versus shadow, and that the birds managed to face each other. I felt it reflected the intimacy of the story excerpt 😀
So there – week 1 down!
I’m expecting these next 52 weeks to be very eye-opening for me. Either I’ll learn a lot and be well-prepared to start my novel series… or I’ll be ready to pull my hair out and run screaming 😉
I’ll still write the novel series even if the photography thing doesn’t work out, but I do hope I can keep this up.
Feedback/advice is welcome.
Some outtakes in my Flickr stream:
