Author: Marina

The Phone Photography Project // Part 1

The Phone Photography Project from Big Picture Classes has finally started! For the next 32 days I will be taking a picture a day using my Iphone, to match the daily challenges set by the instructors.
These are the takes for the first 8 days.

Day 1: From Where I Stand
“Stand in the place where you live // Now face North // Think about direction // Wonder why you haven’t before” 
R.E.M.
Day 2: Initials
“Today’s show was brought to you by the letter A.” 
Grover
Day 3: Summer Project
“With every project you do, you bring out a part of yourself, and it seems to be quite a good way of expanding a person.” 
Kate Beckinsale
Day 4: Summer Food
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”  
J.R.R. Tolkien
Day 5: Family
“I sustain myself with the love of family.” 
Maya Angelou
Day 6: Tourist in Your Own Town
“The traveler sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he has come to see.” 
G.K. Chesterton
Day 7: Morning + Afternoon + Evening Light
“Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down.” 
Jane Kenyon
Day 8: Summer Colors
“I prefer living in color.” 
David Hockney

All the collages have been created using the Iphone app Fuzel. The app is seriously awsome. I have been using the free version, which allows you to add some extra fitures through in-app purchases, but I’m thinking of buying the full version.

I am also posting my pictures daily in Instagram using the #BPCphonephotographyproject tag (click here to follow).

27/52

We have just passed on the other side and I’m still in love with this project. We had a busy week and we are finally enjoying a proper summer! Things look very different when you wake up in the morning and see the sunshine picking trough the curtains, life looks more beautiful than ever.
Picking, and eating, strawberries at our friend’s house 
(thank you Jen for the great picture!)
 This week you:
  • Wore your short sleeves pyjamas and no sleeping bag or blanket.
  • Waved goodbye to your grandparents on Wednesday and cried as soon as they got into the cab. But that was soon forgotten and you turned your interest into something else.
  • Went back to your old habits, i.e. waking up after 7am, as soon as your grandparents left. I guess it was all the excitement of having them here that made you make the most of it!
  • Started nursery full time on Friday. You were happy in the morning and enjoyed playing and having fun. But then refused to go down for a nap, slept for about 30 min in the afternoon and were a bit cranky when I picked you up at 5pm.
  • Got obsessed with shoes. You spent a lot of time trying to put your new sandals on, and even went to nursery holding an extra pair of shoes in your hands. But by the end of the week you got so good at it, you can now put your sandals on correctly. Yeah!
  • Got obsessed with nappies. You wanted me to put a nappy on your monkey puppet and then pretended it had done a poo; you then made a ‘bad smell’ gesture with your hands and face. And that was very funny. But then you started trying to change your own nappy; you learned how to take your dirty one off, to clean yourself using the wipes and almost to put a clean one on. And that was amazing to watch!
From last week, I’m loving Clementine’s portraits from Five Little Flags. Love the face expressions and  the colours of her outfit against the squared light blue wall. Lovely! 
If you are curious about this project and want to know more, you can check Jody’s blog @ Che and Fidel.
All my previous posts can be found here.

walk to work // skies

Capturing the #skies of the british summer has been interesting, if not depressing; during the first week of summer we had more grey skies than blue ones (yeah for the last one just in time for the weekend!).
Over the past week I took two pictures everyday, either in the morning, at lunch time or in the early evening. I picked the same spot, our front door, and shot over the threes opposite where we live. Same location to capture the different moods of a typical (unfortunately!) summer week.
And this has been my last of the #walk to work series, as I want to give space to a new project which has started in July (more on the blog soon). It has been fun to capture some aspects of my daily commute throughout the month of June. It made my walks more interesting and gave me a nice distraction to the fact that i was actually going to the office.

All my daily favourite photos from my walks are on instagram, tagged with #walktowork (click here to follow).
Click on the icon on the right side bar, under the ‘my projects’ section, or just click here to check all my previous #walktowork posts.

26/52

And we reached the half way point! And it doesn’t feel that long ago that I started this project. A lot has happened since week 1, new things have been learned and some old habits have been replaced by new ones. You are growing so fast and becoming more and more independent and a bit of a pain sometimes. But we love you more, and we are proud of you more and more every day.
New trick of the week…hanging on the bar at the playground 
(with your dad close enough to catch you, just in case!)
This week you:

  • Made us kiss each other and give you kisses in the morning.
  • Didn’t want to get dressed! we had to battle and had to force you at the end to take your pyjama off and put some clothes on.
  • Spent too much time playing with phones, laptops and so on. And although we don’t like where this is going we were too lazy to say no and then deal with the consequences! But we are planning to start a detox period from all the electronic gadgets.
  • Had fun playing and spending time with your grandparents. You started to call nonna ‘lalla’ and when calling nonno you just blabbered something incomprehensible.
  • You missed nursery three days, but only because I wanted you to spend as much time with your grandparents. You didn’t seem to notice, let’s see what happen this Friday when things go back to the normal daily routine.
  • You slept less, a lot less. Going to sleep late in the evening, never before 9, and waking up at 6am! And didn’t nap for too long in the afternoon either. I hope it’s just the excitement for having your grandparents here 🙂

From last week’s portraits, my eyes got hooked up by this picture of Ivy from Dreaming of the Country contemplating nature in a wheelbarrow. It makes you love the countryside even more!
If you are curious about this project and want to know more, you can check Jody’s blog @ Che and Fidel.
All my previous posts can be found here.

Walk to work // front doors

There are lots of really pretty houses and cottages on my way to work, with pretty front porches and gardens. This time of the year they are at their best with all the greens and colourful flowers. I love the front doors that people use here in England, they are made of wood and painted in all sort of colours; a big difference from the boring, and mainly brown, aluminium security doors we have in Italy. And people here care about how their house looks like, not just the inside for them to love, but also the outside for everybody else to enjoy.
So “front doors” was last week’s theme for my daily photos. It felt a bit awkward shooting somebody’s house, a bit like an invasion of privacy. But then I thought that these houses are on a main street, their gardens are well maintained probably not just for the pleasure of the owner and I have seen people entering my own front garden just to smell the flowers. And the awkwardness melted away.  And shooting these houses became natural and something to look forward to every morning.
All my daily favourite photos from my walks are on instagram, tagged with #walktowork (click here to follow).
Click on the icon on the right side bar, under the ‘my projects’ section, or just click here to check all my previous #walktowork posts.