Blog - Page 167 of 175 - Suzanne O'Brien Studio

March 20, 2012

You Are Not Alone

A few weeks ago my book group finished reading Unbroken (amazing story – highly recommend to anyone) and we were bantering around ideas for our next book. We decided on Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in A Thousand Years, one of my favorites. The book asks and explores the question – are we living our best life story?

As a lead-in to our new book, we got together yesterday to discuss how we all approach “telling our story” with photos. For a few sweet hours…

* We shared where we are with managing our photos and memories and ideas for how to move forward.
* We discussed if we really need to do something with every picture we’ve ever taken vs. focusing on what we really want to remember.
* We commiserated with each other over the desire to have a place to set up a big photo organization project and just leave it out.
* We considered the importance of photographing everyday life details as well as the big events.
* We agreed that picking one small project to focus on is far superior to thinking about everything we’d like to get done someday.
* We recognized that accountability is key and we are often most successful when we have a hard deadline for a project.

It was a great morning of inspiration and encouragement. However, many of the women expressed feelings I often hear when we talk about all of the photos, videos, memorabilia etc. that we collect throughout of our lives. Feelings and phrases such as:

* I want to do it all, but I’m overwhelmed
* I need to get over my perfectionist tendencies
* I feel guilty that my kid’s memories are trapped in my iPhone

I’m still processing the takeaways from our time together, but I know that one of them was stated by my friend, Sabrena, on her way out the door – “it is nice to know I’m not alone in this area of my life.” I couldn’t agree more.

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March 16, 2012

Little Boy Birthday Party

I love a good back yard birthday party. In keeping with the PhotoBook Friday birthday theme this month, I thought I would share some books I’ve made to document a few kid parties we’ve hosted just out our back doors. I tend to keep these books small (i.e. 7×9 or 8×8) and casual (soft cover) so they feel accessible to the kids and also don’t break the bank. First up, a chef-themed party for a 5 year old boy.

Starting a book with the party invitation is a great way to set the stage for the rest of the book. I’m a big fan of paper invitations and Tiny Prints has some great themed invites, so that is always my first stop to see if they have something that works with my party concept.

I always try to schedule in a few extra minutes before the party starts to take a few shots of the “details” as well as the last minute preparations.

It is always fun to remember the crafts/activities that were part of the day. In this case it was decorating chef hats and playing games such as “Guess the Spices” and marshmallow races. (n.b.: do not play these games expecting 5 year old boys to be able to keep their fingers out of the spices or not eat the marshmallows!)

In addition to a group photo, I try to capture an individual picture of each child (mustaches and silly glasses help to bring out their personalities!).