While the Denver portion of my story has been a positive adventure, it’s entirely too far from these faces! So sometimes I just stare at them when I’m home. Although all those dolls make me feel a little anxious. The second picture makes me wonder if we have the cutest noses in our family. Taken on my iphone at Thanksgiving.

This is the last week of teaching before Christmas break. I’ll be flying home/to Orlando on Saturday and haven’t booked a ticket back yet (just because I don’t know when, not because I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back!) If you are in Florida and you curious about family portraits, drop me an e-mail @ laurahinely@gmail.com

Also–you know you can subscribe to this blog, right? I was just checking some stats and while I’ve had a total of 21,868 viewers of this blog since it’s existence, I see the number of people who actually subscribe to the blog are low in comparison.

I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason my mom commissioned me to document our own family thanksgiving was not only to have the pictures themselves, but to try to get me to shoot something again. We haven’t discussed this but I think it worked a little.

As I’ve gone through phases of looking at other people’s work and NOT looking at other people’s work, there are also cycles of dissatisfaction and discouragement. But an old-school photojournalist (that shot Jonestown post-massacre from the helicopter) told me earlier this year that at least there’s only one me, my eyes, in a certain place at that moment. I make the decision to snap the shutter at a certain time. And the stupid broken camera is just a tool anyway. The image above is my favorite from last week.

It’s papa (who sometimes spells it PawPaw?), age 84, just coming into our house for Thanksgiving. Dad’s on the right side…there to wheel him around or whatever. The sun was shining through so warmly I didn’t ask but knelt down and clicked 4 or 5 frames.

I’m always forced to take the annual formal family portraits, which I feel guilty for even saying how much I don’t like doing it because of how supportive (financially and otherwise) my family has been through my photographic ups and downs. I OWE them that at the very least. But I prefer when they forget I have the camera, and can provide a truer, more accurate picture of who they are.

P.S. I feel the need to clarify (esp for my fam!) that I’m always glad I did it after the fact and I know deep down it’s an honor.

Sorry. It’s kinda been a while. That’s because I moved (to an apartment in downtown Denver) and lack reliable internet (basement apartment = cheaper = no signal for anything) and went home to Florida for Thanksgiving (which resulted in the above photo of my pilgrim nephew. Indian pictures to come) and also sent in my main camera (D700) and main lens (24-70 2.8) to the doctor for an overdue estimate/repair (waiting to hear the damage) after a fatal drop onto cement (which resulted in the lower right corner vignette as you can see in the photo above).

Besides all that I haven’t been shooting much. When I have it’s been with my instax or thrifted 35 mm (film is being processed now). When I told my mom I haven’t felt like shooting, she wisely said “that’s because you haven’t been shooting.” The logic of that was obvious to me. I don’t feel like it because I haven’t been doing it. I should know myself enough by now to know I get into a sort of zone and sometimes I have to make myself start shooting to even begin to like it. That said, I’m SO excited to shoot a wedding with Hailey in Nashville in January and there are a few more things on the horizon.

I’m also researching MFA programs. This year has afforded me the chance to see how much I LOVE teaching and I may want to do more of it. Most of you may know this, but I’m passionate about connecting faith and creativity (as I believe we all are created in God’s image and he is the first/ultimate Artist, we must have a shadow of that as well). I’ve discovered ONE faith-based MFA in Visual Arts in the entire country (please let me know if you find another one) and I am looking into it.

This is wordy enough. That is all for now.

Hullo world. I’m still giddy about my first ever blizzard here in Denver. It’s been snowing for 2 days and I just ventured out to see what it looked like and it’s beautiful. I’ll confess I’m getting a little stir-crazy although I know I could be doing any number of projects. Also,just got word that tomorrow is a snow day! No school! Picture taken with my iphone and edited with the photoshop app.

P.S. If you haven’t read my ramble below, I’d love feedback, even if it’s a difference of opinion..

Though I’m always reluctant to say the words “I am an artist” or “I am a photographer” out loud, I’ve secretly thought them…maybe in subconscious hopes that it will begin to sound less pretentious to my own ears. Through teaching both of these subjects, it’s hard to not put my own skill or creative tendencies in context of what I am teaching (both in photography and art appreciation) my students. This was especially true last week as we dove into Impressionism in art appreciation and I poured through one of my favorite sources Art: A New History (Paul Johnson).

Impressionism is usually known to have not been widely accepted in its beginnings (although I’ve read some opinions that that has been exaggerated). That changed over time…but at what cost? Johnson said:

“But as always with artistic successes, there were drawbacks. One was a certain loss of individuality. Art is essentially a personal response to the visual world, and an artist should always be wary of belonging to a coterie. Of the artists commonly classified as Impressionists, it was those who were emphatically not impressionistic but realists who kept their individuality–Degas and Mary Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec and Caillebotte.”

What’s my point? With my “photographer’s mind” I immediately thought of my own art form. With the widespread ability (Travesty? No, I kid.) to easily obtain a camera comes a loss of individuality. In certain genres of photography especially, there’s an alarming amount of repetition. Not to say I haven’t been guilty of it too, but with the internet, its like a brushfire of…bad ideas? Or one good idea copied relentlessly until it is so deteriorated as to lose its value. Using tracing paper well over an original does not make me an artist. I’m not so worried about labels/perceptions as I am over my continuation of growth. At the same time–shouting I’M DIFFERENT! from the rooftops won’t accomplish anything either.  So it’s no good to be different for the sake of being different.

But I ask myself, at the risk of sounding ego-centric, what do I have to say and how can I say it best?

Remember when I showed a picture from my Highway 301 Project? I have more, and as I’ve been culling through my portfolio and redefining my…voice, I’ve paid attention to different pictures than before. This image is one I passed over at first and now I’ve stared at it way too much. That’s my shadow, yes, and my cousin in the background, in a cemetery.

McCall is one of my students. She also offered to help collaborate for this shoot which was part portrait, part lifestyle, part whatever struck my fancy. My thought process was to get as far away from a traditional senior picture session as possible, but still explore portraits…of a senior (just in a rad, unexpected way). The light was varied and beautiful. We worked with a concept I’ve had for a while–riding the Light Rail from the end of the line (my stop) to Union Station (downtown) and stopping along the way. The amazing light in the tunnel-ish image is underneath Union Station. The last shot is the sky on the way home from the train window. It was COLD but worth it, I think.

So, you may have noticed (Rose) that I accidentally posted some info on here that was intended for my class (maybe you enjoyed looking at the links too, however!) because I was delusional and I manage 2 class blogs on this same platform and was bound to get things mixed up. But, I’m very pleased with the photo shoot I have to share today! I’m not through editing so here’s one to tide you over until a bit later.

An outtake from a shoot for the FC mag last week in Erie, Colorado. Funnily enough, it’s probably my favorite image from the afternoon. There’s another one I’d like to post once the mag is in peoples mailboxes.

Teaching is still going swimmingly…totally endeared to my students, love having a captive audience (no one’s really surprised by that) and I get paid to encourage creativity in photography and art. Dare I say it, I wouldn’t mind teaching more than 2 days a week! (Maybe 3 would be just right.)

In my spare time I’ve been devouring novels written mostly before the 1950s. Favorites so far are The Wonderful Year (copyright 1946), Dear Enemy (1915) and Bright Island (1964…a bit later but just as dear). There’s something surprisingly profound in each of these, and I MAY have laughed and cried.  Also, it’s soup weather and I’m trying a new recipe this week. The weather is unpredictable (60’s today, forecast of snow tomorrow) and I love it. And we (cousins and I) have started watching the National Parks Ken Burns documentary on PBS and it’s so good but bad because I already want to visit all the national parks and it’s only making it worse. Every few months, the travel bug bites me hard so who knows where I’ll go next (I have good friends in Switzerland and Turkey right now!)

Back in June when I was in California, still on the high of shooting Will and Kristens wedding the weekend before, a group of us drove out to Point Reyes. I’ve been fortunate to have many a road-trip, perhaps my favorite kind of trip, with spontaneous and wonderful friends. Point Reyes was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen…but I was saving the pictures until I needed a reminder of that bright, friend-filled day. Here’s an earlier post with some portraits from that day.

It was super windy!

The lighthouse on the peninsula.

Inside the lighthouse.

I almost didn’t include this because I was afraid you would realize how I’m not a perfect photographer. But it’s too laughable not to.

From the car window on the way home.