It’s a wonder that, with all of my disorganization and chaotic messaging back and forth with Nancy Lary,  she didn’t decide to just back out of this project completely.  (Now she knows what my family goes through every day.)    Luckily she has a fine  sense of humor and stuck with me.   I’m thrilled because now I can share with you the fabulous ways Nancy has used her prints in her home!  I adore those black and whites over her sofa! And there is a smidgen of a chance she may actually have the power to coax me back over to the dark side and begin scrapbooking a Project Life Album.  Maybe…

(Oh, and Nancy, my call would be WITH the white border.)

The absolute most important thing I do with my own pictures is this Project Life album.  Sure, I’m way behind.  But it’s an ongoing effort & it’s something we will have forever.  For such a long time, I was paralyzed by the task of using the gajillions of pictures I was taking to actually document our life.  Scrapbooks?  Please (too.much.junk.).  Albums?  Wait…they need to match, I need to find the perfect album and buy 100 of them (as if I’d have been unhappy with a shelf of albums filled with pictures in non-identical albums).  Prints?  Must have white borders.  All prints must have white borders (why?).  Then I came upon Project Life and forced myself to embrace the simplicity.  I was hooked after the first couple of pages when I saw that I had truly seen those photos through to the end of the process:  capture, edit, print, document.  There are a lot of iPhone pics in there of which I’m particularly proud because those are proof that I’m capturing spontaneous moments & seeing those images through to the end of the process as well.

I was so proud to have pulled it together to go to the beach for shots of my own family this summer.  I set up a tripod & used a remote.  I’m so pleased with these images.  Not only am I happy to have us together, it really was a happy experience.  I had this display planned in my head by the time we got home but (I’m going to be real here) I hadn’t printed the standouts until last week.  Thanks for the nudge, Wendy!

This is my favorite.  Eight 16 x 16 canvases.  My kids love seeing any prints of themselves.  But these?  They are more proud of these than I am.  Any time I think of the way kids feel about seeing their own images printed big like this, I remember Jessica Gwozdz’sKids As Art project.  I love that they see these & think, “Wow, my mom took a picture of me that she likes so much that she wants to hang it up as art for everyone to see.”  This was just four canvases for over a year.  When people saw them, I’d say, “And there will be another row of four…”.  I think the adage that my favorite picture would be the one that I’d take next got the best of me.  I’m glad it’s a full set of 8 now.

This was another issue on which I allowed myself to be paralyzed by perfection.  Oh all of the ways we see on Pinterest to string pictures up.  I went in the other direction & just used string & tiny clothespins.  It’s the perfect place to hang  4 x 6′s when they arrive from the lab!  I have, and I’m not kidding, four of these things in my house.  Two are for kid artwork.  Two are for pictures.

And the obligatory family picture over the fireplace.  This is a standout that I ordered a little smaller than the one that was there before.  This space still needs some creativity!

Thanks so much for the opportunity to really think about this & finish some projects, Wendy!  I think that as photographers, it’s easy to forget the power & responsibility we hold in taking all of these pictures & end up overwhelmed with the task of making use of them.  It’s not hard.  So to the photographers out there?  Print 10 4 x 6′s (with or without the white border, I can’t make that call for anyone but myself…) with your next client order, you’ll be glad you did.

Thank you, Nancy!