The Gurly Life

Joy of Love Day whatever

The Joy of Love project has not been completely forgotten, it just got kinda repetitive, and anyway I basically just went off the reservation with it so whatever. Yay!

This is my friend Eileen. I won't tell you her story because it's her story, and maybe I can get her to write a blog post about it but it's quite a story and I've never seen anyone handle adversity like she does. I say does, because some folks just don't get much in the way of breaks. Here she's playing with her food: she's sprinkling steamed wild rice on her herb soup.

Joy of Love Day 18: Going Out

I'm all over the place with this one! All over the place. The instructions say, have someone else take a snapshot while you're out. Whatever. It said, going out. Here's my mom, going out. She's off to the Senior Center, there's a group of folks who meet every Friday to discuss politics, so that's where she was going. She's looking at her watch because she doesn't want me to waste a lot of time taking the picture. Tee hee.

Joy of Love Day 15: totally behind!

No, just kidding. Something about kissy face today, but I forgot to smooch my mom. But the photo was supposed to be taken in a mirror. I picked our bathroom mirror - there are towels and lots of bathroom accoutrements, the kitty litter, a couple of cabinets. But mostly there are lots of towels. We're the people who check into a hotel and immediately determine that 6 bath towels per person is not enough and call housekeeping for an extra 4. What? Have you tried it? They'll totally bring you all the towels you want!

Joy of Love Day 12: Their eyes

Joy of Love Day 11: Their dreams

Today's Joy of Love photo is about their dreams. My mom dreams of becoming a US citizen. I don't blame her. I got my citizenship in 2000 and I couldn't be more proud to be an American. Natch, I'm also very proud of being Italian, but that's not what this post is about. Here's today's photo. I have two versions.

I prefer the black and white because you can really see the lines on my mom's hands and the texture of the passport cover. The mood is also more appropriate to the theme: she's cradling the passport and in the black and white photo the preciousness of the citizenship comes across. The black and white also evokes the history of immigration, generations of people whose dream was to come to this country. The color one is pretty, but it makes me think more of a promotional shot for a car or a food processor.

Joy of Love Day 10: Where They Are Comfortable

[I didn't have time to do Day 9. I may or may not come back to it.]

Day 10 of the Joy of Love photo marathon is Where They Are Comfortable. I will let the photos speak for themselves.

Joy of Love Day 8: A Gift From The Heart

Today's Joy of Love project is to photograph a gift from the heart. A gift someone you love gave you that made a difference. The lesson is to play with the manual setting on the camera. This would have presented a challenge, had it not been for my visit to DC last October, where I played with the manual setting a lot, especially for the night shots. Not that I have it down pat, obvy, but it is not a big scary hurdle to get over - it's more like something I can use more practice in.

I chose a gift from my dad for today's pic. To be sure, I get amazing gifts from both my parents, and my friends, and my family. The gifts are sometimes small, like a frog pen, sometimes large, like my Nikon D80, which I've been using throughout this project and increasingly over the last 3 years I've had it. The Nikon, by the way, was also a gift from my dad, who I remind each and every time I mention it that it's his own stupid fault that he got me started on this whole photography thing, and that he should just be grateful that I never took to sailing - that kind of hobby can ruin a man. He should also be grateful that the days of negatives and dark rooms are pretty much behind us, this hobby could have cost him a lot more.

But, back to today's photo. This is my bike. From about March/April through October/November, I take it to the beach and go for rides with my excellent friends Willow and Adam, and sometimes Todd and Kristen too. Each time I'm on that bike it feels like we're kids again. This past summer it languished almost unused because we had such shitty cold weather. The two weeks when it was warm I pedaled up and down the beach like it was going out of style. I am looking forward to a hot summer and lots of bike rides this year.

This is the jpeg photo, unedited, because I don't have time today. If I manage it later, I'll repost it edited.

Joy of Love Day 7: Generations

Today's Joy of Love theme is Generations. I have one grandmother left who lives in Sicily and I don't think has ever gotten on a plane, who turned 105 this year (here, she's getting ready to go to church on her 100th birthday),

several parents, a bunch of us kids, and only one person on each side of my family has had children - which just goes to show you that if you don't have parents who hound you to give them grandchildren, you won't.

But, since my whole family is in Europe, except for my mom who is currently here with me, I only have the two of us for this project. Incidentally, I'll be seeing my dad in May, so you'll get lots of pictures of him then.

The first is the one I added to the Joy of Love Flickr group. Today I played around with cropping and the straightening tool. So basically, even though we're being given a small lesson with each project, I'm just making shit up as I go along and doing whatever. In the unedited photo, the back of the couch is not flush with the horizontal. By shifting the position of the photo, it make it a little more interesting.

Later, I'll write a post about my socks. A quick one. Maybe.

Joy of Love Day 6: Who They Love

Today's Joy of Love theme is Who They Love. The "they" in this case is still my mom. Since our whole family is in Europe, other than me and the kitties, the other people my mom loves are my friends. This is one of them, my dear friend Willow. We have known each other since law school, so we're going on 11 years now. Willow is good people, and today we had lunch and got caught up.

Here I experimented with backlighting and the flash on my camera.

Joy of Love Day 5: Love to Hate

Today's Joy of Love theme is what you love to hate. I'm back with Maliboo Kitty. She's a huge pain in the butt - she hisses all the time, growls and yells, sinks her teeth into any fabric that she can make permanent holes in, sharpens her claws on the couch and rips it up, and bites and scratches my shoes. All my flip flops have bite marks and claw marks. She annoys the hell out of me, I'm always yelling "NO!!" repeatedly and waving my hands about, which has almost no effect whatsoever, except maybe to signal that the game is on.

Today's lesson had to do with selective focus and metering, which I'm familiar with, and it just didn't lend itself so I decided to strike out on my own and do some black and white fiddling. This photo is not that interesting to begin with, and in color it was too busy, with the colors of the carpet distracting from the evil beast. I think this is marginally better.