Author Archives: vivienne

March 14, 2013

You are Your Own Muse {a new session is starting soon}!

An outtake from this month’s She is Three photo!

I seem to be spilling the story more lately, how I found photography in a place where I felt really lost.

Where everything was changing and I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I felt like a blank slate, which was exciting yet absolutely scary at the same time.

But I found my way back, primarily using my camera as a tool to find my way home.

I’m so excited to be teaching You are Your Own Muse again, starting in April! This is the first E-Course I ever created and while it has evolved over the years (2 years of amazing participants from around the world joining in…wow) at its heart, it really is about using the camera as a tool to find our way home.

I’ve been getting some great emails lately asking how You are Your Own Muse differs from Be Your Own Beloved and I thought this was a great thing to share with you today!

At the core of both classes is the energy that those words: Be Your Own Beloved sing of. Of seeing ourselves with kindness. Of using the camera as a tool to quiet the negative voices that try to derail a place of self-love. Of seeing ourselves in ways we didn’t expect.

Of finding our way home.

There are a few big differences too:

You are Your Own Muse is 6 week self-portrait exploration. While in BYOBeloved we explore a gentle prompt each day, in YAYOM we explore a theme each week, making room for us to dive deeper and savour the prompt of the week.
In YAYOM you’ll find answers to all those questions you might have wondered in BYO Beloved or seeing self-portraits of others: How do they get the background blurry like that? What gear would I need to get a jumping shot? How can I tell this story in a photo? We explore some technical aspects (playfully of course) and start to look at self-portraiture through the eye of our inner creative through exploring light, our narrative, creating a setting and more. You don’t need to be able to call yourself a photographer to take this class but I warn you….you might feel that way by the end!
I’m here to answer your questions and to cheer you along in the journey. Okay, I confess I kind of have an obsession with commenting on every photo in every class, in YAYOM I go deeper with you. I’m available throughout the class to answer all your questions, to help you push through fear that arises, to give you feedback on your classes. It is important to me to offer more affordable classes like the BYO series and YAYOM does cost more, but with that investment in yourself I am able to invest more time and support for you (and I’ll remind you throughout the class to really take advantage of that)!
The content is totally different! While the energy of cultivating self-kindness is the same, this class is entirely different with a whole different curriculum for you to explore!
Plus, you get a course PDF of the entire class (92 inspiring pages) so you can explore the content beyond the end of class too!

If you have any questions about whether You are Your Own Muse is a fit for you (or if the idea of joining us feels beautifully scary)….please don’t hesitate to reach out and email me at vivienne.mcmater@gmail.com

Or if you’re ready to dive in, you can sign up here!

Class starts soon!

March 13, 2013

Looking Ourselves in the Eye

Looking ourselves in the eyes…

It has been one of my favourite types of self-portraits for a while now. As I look into the camera it feels like it is capturing a really alive and engaged moment. Yet I also can’t help think that a future me will look in her eyes some day (just like I look at older photos like this) and remember where she was, remember what she didn’t yet know and remember what was not yet lost or gained.

In these last couple months of Be Your Own Beloved and Be Your Own Light it has been so fun to share this tool and I’ve got to say it has been one of my absolute favourite days of each course when we get to look into our own cameras and into our own eyes.

I encourage people to really take this photo for themselves, but I can’t help but notice the ways that doing this for ourselves creates connection and community.

Yesterday we did that activity for Be Your Own Light and yet again, it floored me, seeing all of those powerful lit up eyes of the participants.

It is so simple yet so powerful to look ourselves in the eyes with kindness and to see the spark in our own eyes.

I feel like it also allows us to be seen in a way that is really powerful (and yes, maybe scary at first). Being able to look someone in the eyes (yes, even ourselves) is so powerful. The photo creates a moment of connection.

With ourselves.

With one another.

Looking on Instagram (photos are tagged #beyourownlight on Instagram if you want to take a peek) and the flickr group this morning as the photos are still pouring in from yesterdays activity I am (yet again) tearing up in the cafe where I’m working. Being able to look the participants in the eye and to see all of these photos side by side is just amazing. I’m looking each participant in the eyes and send them love (even if it wasn’t in words). I somehow feel like they will receive it on the other end, cause the universe is just like that. It is filling me up with gratitude and love for the brave beautiful people who have gifted themselves with this adventure to see themselves with love.

Yes.

Because we are all worthy of that kind of connection with ourselves and the love the ripples outward and is reflected back at us when we gift ourselves with these acts of ‘showing up’ for ourselves.

{if you feel inspired to look yourselves in the eyes in a photo today, please tag it with #beyourownbeloved on Instagram

or link to it in todays comments as I’d love to see it}

March 11, 2013

Creating Intentional Blur with an iPhone

There is something about taking blurry photos that speaks to me.

That adds a bit of dreaminess to a photo and even feels more emotive.

I love taking intentionally blurry photos with my DSLR, like in this post, but assumed that just wasn’t an option with an iPhone.

Then the other day when I was taking the macro photos, a second big discovery happened. I had been taking close-up of a water droplet and used the AF-Lock I mentioned the other day. The Autofocus was locked so once I took that very close up photo, it stayed locked even though I kept on walking down the sidewalk and I squeeled with glee at what I saw, that the screen had a dreamy blur to it. I snapped the above photo right away.

I don’t think I mentioned the other day where you can find the Autofocus lock! I mostly do this using the basic camera on my phone (not an app). All you need to do is to put your finger on the spot you want to focus and hold it there. Your phone will have a white square where you are touching and it will turn blue and the words AF lock appear on the screen. Apparently this is a feature on the iPhone 4 too…so if you have one, try it out!

Discovering this makes me so happy as there are some moments that feel like they call for some blur and before now I didn’t know how to make that happen.

Here are a few more blurry shots (I’m getting obsessed). Have you tried this on your iPhone or experimented with it using another type of camera? I’d love to see!

March 7, 2013

In Bloom

It is beginning.

They are rising up from the ground, protective and held tight in a bud. Then like the Anais Nin quote:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

And they do.

The other day was that one, where they started to bloom. First the crocuses and others will soon follow suit.

At this season I watch them closely, keeping watch for when they start to blossom. I think it can’t help but invite an unfolding in us too.

March 6, 2013

iPhone Macro Love

So recently I had to upgrade my iPhone.

My phone was pretty old school (a 3Gs) and I didn’t think it would be that drastic of a change to upgrade it but oh my goodness….each day I discover something new about how the camera works. I’m falling even more head over heels with it all the time.

Last week was the typical grey and rainy winter weather here in Vancouver. One of my favourite ways to brighten my spirits on these rainy days is to take photos of water droplets and focus in on the little bits of beauty of the rain.

This was the first time I’d tried this with this new phone was surprised to realize how this new phone has some pretty wicked Macro capabilities…I was totally in awe. I feel like it is actually pretty close to the kind of macro shot you’d get with a DSLR and a Macro lens…which is kind of mind blowing. In these shots I’m not using anything extra like those lenses you put on your iPhone (though those look cool) or any sort of app. This is just using the basic camera on the iPhone5.

Here are a few things I’ve discovered while experimenting with shooting macro with this phone:

Crop In

This was one of my favourite tricks with shooting macro with a macro lens…that often after we take the photo we might notice that there is a part of the photo that we didn’t even see in taking it that has some amazing qualities to it (like an unexpected awesome water droplet). Some of these photos aren’t their original size but are actually cropped in to focus on one part of the image! Macro invites us to look at the little things and I find once we take the photo we can look even closer!

Autofocus Lock

This biggest change that I think allows us to capture rockin’ macros with this phone is the Autofocus feature. It allows you to lock the focus on that one spot so you can move your camera around without it trying to refocus again and again…which ROCKS (and more about this in another post this week as the autofocus lock rocks for even more reasons).

Shoot without Looking

This is one of my favourite tips I share in the Tips and Tricks for taking Dreamy Photos E-Book. Its a trick I use for getting my creative juices flowing (and getting out of my left brain)…to take the camera away from your eyes and take photos without composing them. So often this makes for beautiful unexpected photos. I especially love doing this with shooting macro…to just get your camera as close as you can and just experiment and with the iPhone it does help to do a shot close up and set the Autofocus Lock and then just have fun with it!

Here are a few more macro shots from the iPhone this week: