Photographs are windows to our memory. Reflections of our life. Reminders of our blessings. Each Wednesday we are featuring 5 personal favorite photos from a Creative Team member or a friend. These 5 photos will remind of us why photography is so beautiful and why documenting the everyday is so important. The goal is to leave us all a little more inspired to cultivate a good life and record it.

Our inspiration this weeks comes from – Creative Team member Monica McNeill.

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This summer we spent a lot of time in the car taking my oldest son to and from camp. While my middle son is not old enough for camp, at 2 years old, he is old enough to want to be just like his brother. He insisted on taking a bat and glove with him because that is what Garrett was doing. Instead of focusing on my son with the bat and glove I decided to let the ballpark sign fill the picture to emphasize how little Owen is in this moment. By doing this I am now telling two stories with this picture.

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The first few weeks of my maternity leave my older boys were both still in school. This gave me & Travis a good bit of time to be still. I wanted to capture this special time together so I became very comfortable with self portraits. I took this picture by simply holding my iPhone above us. Your cell phone is a great tool for self portraits. It is light and easy to manipulate your angle. Also, there are so many different photography applications that you can then post process your pictures with. After I took this picture with my phone I used Instagram to blur out our surroundings and draw a stronger focus to Travis.

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With a toddler and an infant I spend a lot of my time sitting on the floor playing with them. This photo was taken on a lazy Saturday morning. I love this picture because it just hints at the chaos in this season of life: blocks on the floor, busy hands, little legs learning to kick and a Mama in the middle of it all. By creatively cropping the picture I got to decide which story to tell.

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At the beginning of summer my oldest son & I made a list of everything we wanted to do. He has been a fan of the zoo since he was tiny. But up until this visit he has not had a partner in crime to run ahead with. Once the baby & I caught up to the boys I took a series of shots of them at this ledge.This is my favorite because there are now two sets of feet balancing on the edge to get a better look.  Even though I can’t see their faces I will be able to look back on this picture and remember when five and a half years was a big age difference. These boys are going to grow so fast & I want to capture all the little details like chubby little legs versus longer lean legs and where the bottom of their shorts hit relative to each other.

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I am extremely uncomfortable asking people to pose for a picture. I much prefer to observe camera in hand and when those around me are immersed in “being them” – then begin to shoot. This was one of those moments. My dad & middle son were singing when all of a sudden Owen ran off. At first we thought he had tired of the game but then he brought them each a microphone. He and my Dad were so wrapped up in their moment they forgot I was there. These are the pictures that make me come alive.

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You can learn more about Monica here, and check out more of her everyday photos and Project Life pages on her blog.

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By the way, yesterday I was part of the Paperclipping Roundtable. We had a fantastic discussion on how to fit scrapbooking in our very busy lives, in case you’re interested in listening. Plus – I take a couple minutes on the show to explain more about what people can expect out of my upcoming online class – Project Real Life. Listen HERE.

Tags: creative team, Everyday Photos

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.