Quote of the Day - 2/24/2012

You don’t have to be beautiful; you just have to walk as if you were. - Sherry Conway Appel in From Mother to Daughter: Advice and Lessons for a Good Life

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Your walk is the way you are most often moving through the world…it says a lot about you. As Sherry Conway points out…you don’t have to be - ‘you just have to walk as if you were.’

Do some people watching to confirm the notion for yourself? 

• What do you think when you see a person walking with their eyes firmly on the ground in front of them or someone that shuffles their feet?
• Pick a person that has a confident walk. If you saw a still picture of them, would you have the same impression?
• Alternatively - have you ever seen a picture of someone then met them later and found your first impression of them from the picture at odds with your second impression?

So - whatever you want to be - ‘Walk as if you were’ is very sound advice.

Quote of the Day - 2/19/2012

No one can observe and analyze beautiful things in nature or works of art without increasing his capacity to appreciate and therefore enjoy the best. - Henry Turner Bailey in Photography and fine art

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The quote today is from a book published in 1918 - just as photography was gaining wider popularity. It seems logical to me that having the discipline to notice beautiful things in our everyday activities does indeed increase our ‘capacity to appreciate and enjoy the best.’ I was given a new camera for Christmas 2010 and used it as a springboard to dramatically increase my forays into botanical photography (and photography in general). Now I find that I ‘see’ more than I did a year ago….and enjoy the challenge of capturing what I find.

Henry Turner Bailey was Dean of the Cleveland School of Art when he wrote the book. My favorite images are of things I recognize like the Jack-in-the-Pulpit on page 30 (small version at left) and the dogwoods on page 31.

Note: I’ve provided links to the hardcopy version of this book on Amazon but it is freely available on the Internet Archive to enjoy on line: Photography and Fine Art.

The Luxuries in Life

What is your unique perception of luxury? Suspend the outside influences on your perception (and there are a lot of them so this can take some effort).

When I did this for myself recently – I was surprised that the luxuries of my life are plentiful and often easily achieved. Here’s my list: 

1. Seeing a beautiful sunrise or sunset and not having to rushing off to some other activity (picture at right is a rainbow at sunset)
2. Confident enough of food availability to not eat excessively – ever
3. Dark chocolate for breakfast
4. Visiting my daughter on my birthday
5. Hot tea on a cold day
6. Having time to celebrate or grieve rather than soldiering on bravely
7. Spending the majority of my day on things I choose
8. A new computer that is working exactly the way I want it to
9. Beauty and function in the same object like the leaf coaster I have in my office (picture on right)
10. Naturally long fingernails  

Analyzing my list of 10, I discovered some themes: 

• Food (2, 3, 5)
• Relationships (4, 6)
• Visual beauty (1, 9, 10)
• Choices (7,8) 

Recognizing and acknowledging the luxury in life is closely linked to feelings of thankfulness and happiness for me. Maybe this exercise of taking a snapshot of luxuries is worth doing more often!