#lookforthelight: july 2014
My favourite Instagram shots of July. It was a great month.
It's been about 10 months now since we've been doing #lookforthelight together -- that's 10 months of us sharing the light in our lives, as captured on our Instagram accounts. I've so been enjoying all of your photographs, all these glimpses into worlds that are so different from mine, and yet, contain such very similar light.
That said, if, like me, you've been using Instagram as a way to have a daily practice of capturing beauty and light in your life, after a certain amount of time you might feel like you're taking the same pictures over and over again (I have to admit that traveling as much as I have over the past few weeks has been a welcome photographic change in the mundane). So I thought before sharing your beautiful photographs for July, I'd share one of my favourite little exercises that I do, to help get the creativity cobwebs out. I call it the "100 Paces Exercise."
The 100 Paces Exercise is great to inspire creativity when you don't have a lot of time or money to travel somewhere fabulous, or you feel like you've run out of things to photograph. Simply grab your camera, walk out the door (of your house, your workplace, wherever), and go 100 paces in any direction. Then stop. Now, capture 20 images of whatever you find that's interesting in that spot.
The point of this exercise is to force you to look closely at your surroundings, consider various angles and find something unusual about your specific location. I’ve actually done this exercise several times in the past, and it was a great way to clear away the creativity cobwebs, and look at familiar places in a whole new way.
So give it a whirl -- and as always, let me know what light you find.
And with that, here are 10 of my favourites of your shots this past month (be sure to click on each photographer's name, so you can see more of their awesome work).
Left: @staceyechin
Right: @pattic
Left: @xantheb
Right: @sthrnfairytale
Left: @foxglovelane
Right: @achilleaflowers
Left: @francinecallaloosoup
Right: @jessicalmarquez
Left: @livwhite19
Right: @elzbthstrttn
Beautiful work, friends. I can't wait to see what you share for August.
Thanks again to all of you who participated this month in #lookforthelight -- keep 'em coming! If you'd like to participate and you have an Instagram account (it's free), simply grab shots of the light in your life with your mobile device, and add the hashtag "#lookforthelight" to your shot, either in the caption or in the comments. I'll feature my 10 favourite shots again at the end of August here on Chookooloonks, giving lots of link love, naturally. And of course, click here to see all the submissions (and feel free to follow along my own progress at heychookooloonks on Instagram!).