Learn to See Yourself with Compassion

December 3, 2013

Unexpected Light

Yesterday I went over to the community garden in my neighbourhood to test out a few activities for the new class: The Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography (which is going to pretty much be the most fun photography class ever). We’re going to stop our perfectionist side from limiting our photo adventures and have so much fun that we just can help but fall in love with photography!

It was truly so lovely to wander in the garden.

Sure, there are no flowers blooming and most of the leaves had fallen.

I think its so easy to assume that there is nothing to be inspired by now that it is the winter, the grey season here.

But this photo walk reminded me to expect the unexpected.

In a few months the unexpected might be new blossom bursting open.

Or another walk it might be an unexpected sculpture in the garden I hadn’t noticed before.

But today it was my favourite unexpected. The light.

It was late afternoon and as the sun fell it not only poured through the trees gorgeously, it ended up being a beautiful golden hue that led to a pink and blue sunset.

I think that is one of my favourite things about light. That you never know what might happen next. How quickly that ray of light will be gone, how much things change season to season and the way the light falls in one season is so different from the others.

Its that beautiful reminder to make the most of the moment before the light changes. To go for it. To pick up our cameras and take that shot.

To live in, and to capture the moment.

I’m mighty excited to share some of these activities I was testing out today in The Rebel’s Guide! Its a rare group session of a class that actually isn’t about self-portraiture, but I absolutely LOVE teaching these activities in person and really wanted to provide them to you so you can fall head over heels with photography in a playful & accessible class!

As well, if you’re craving to learn more about light, I have two self-paced classes about light: Light Hunters (which is all about different types of light) and Be Your Own Light (which merges the Light Hunters class with Be Your Own Beloved and invites you to learn about light AND let your light shine)!

I also want to invite you to just be open to the unexpected as you go about your journey today and of course, have your camera ready! You never know what light might cross your path and ask to be captured in your camera (and perhaps you might just want to add your light to the photo too)!

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December 2, 2013

My Word of the Year for 2014

So, like many of you, I choose a word of the year to guide each year.

Its been interesting to observe that process time and I’ve noticed something happen over the years.

When I pick a pretty word, a gentle one that warms my heart, that feels calming to say aloud….I have a gentle year (which is usually oh so appreciated).

But when I pick a word that feels deeply uncomfortable to say aloud, let alone write about in a blog post, those are the words that change my life. Those are the words that I need to choose to make transformations happen.

The words that have done this for me over the years are:

Thrive (I know it sounds gentle but nope….to learn to thrive we end up dealing with the ways we are only just surviving).

Confidence (yup, that was one of the words that was hard to say aloud).

Confidence was the word I chose in 2012 and like with all of these more uncomfortable words, I feel like they actually take 2 years to really manifest the greatest effects. Confidence felt like it was getting to the core of what I most wanted to change in my life. While it has been mighty tough exploring confidence, I look at the past 2 years and see how much has changed within my body image and self-love as well as my business.

So it seems as though every 2 years I’m ready for a get-you-in-the-gut word and my word appeared in September, but it has actually taken me this long to really acknowledge that it is the guiding word.

Because its a big one. Because its uncomfortable to say. Because it might be the thing I most need to address in my life.

Are you ready for it?

Worthy

I realized it this fall at the Wise Bodies, Wise Hungers retreat led by Anna Guest-Jelley and Rachel Cole. I had taken one of Rachel’s Retreatshops in the summer in Vancouver and at the retreatshop, I had gotten clarity that I was hungry for Love (which was no surprise). But after the retreatshop I took all those realizations and safely tucked them away, not really thinking about them much until I was sitting in a circle on the wood floor of the Green Gulch Zen Center for Wise Bodies, Wise Hungers and Rachel asked it again. It was like I opened the book where I had written all that emotion and had shut it tightly until that moment.

Except this time I saw what was underneath the hunger to be loved and to love. It was the hunger to feel worthy of love. To not just feel like I would be worthy of it (or any good things that might happen in my life) once I achieved something or had healed certain emotions. That I was worthy of it today, without doing anything to change, or improve.

Because we are all inherently worthy of love, just as we are.

I always want these guiding words to be a part of my personal and business journey too and this one, oh heck yes it speaks to them both. I briefly mentioned in the ‘Behind the Scenes‘ post that I had an exciting week this fall where I had a great call with a publisher and was full of hope. I also felt worthy (which felt really foreign). I saw my work with Be Your Own Beloved as worthy of being in book form. So when that fell through, I was left holding that worthiness in my hands and wondering what to do with it.

Should I let go of that feeling of being worthy of something good to happen?

Am I only worthy if I have the approval of others?

Or, like this journey of self-love, is worthiness something that I get to bestow upon myself?

I also want to unravel the places where I have been seeking worthiness. Where I have been expressing my hunger for this worthiness. Like feeling worthy of buying things. Feeling worthy or unworthy in my relationship to food. This is the way these ‘words of the year’ tend to work for me. Of noticing where there is work to do around that word in order to get to the healing part of it.

To be totally honest, I also hope and want to step into what confidence has taught me and really explore what if I lived from a place of worthiness, not unworthiness? I feel like these years of confidence have really got me to that transition point, ready to step away from living from a place of unworthiness and into a new story, a new experience.

This feels like the wild unknown.

Like the unspoken under it all.

Like one of the core layers of healing work in this lifetime for me.

I just have to pause and say how grateful I am for the work Rachel Cole puts out in the world. I wouldn’t have found my way to this word, to being ready to unravel my unworthiness and to build a new relationship to it without her incredibly unique approach.

So, have you found your word for the year yet? I know its kind of early and I don’t usually have mine by this point in the year, but I wanted to speak this one aloud before I could tuck it away in my back pocket again.

If you do have a word, or a few you are pondering, I’d love to know! Are you craving a gentle word this year or an earth-shaking one?

November 27, 2013

Behind the Scenes

I feel like I’ve been sharing a lot of news and adventures this fall with you here on the blog but behind the scenes there has been a lot more going on. Good, tender, healing, vulnerable stuff. The kind that I generally keep a bit quiet. But today felt like a day when I thought I’d share it with you, a bit of what has been going on behind the scenes.

Behind the scenes I’ve been showing up for big dreams. Writing. Working on that book I mentioned a few months back. Writing a book proposal and putting it out to the world (or rather, a few publishers).

Behind the scenes I’ve been holding onto hope when one showed very excited interest. Holding onto the belief that this could actually happen. Then negotiating the ouch of the rejection that I know is a part of finding a publisher that is the right fit for this book. Then cultivating resilience.

Behind the scenes I’ve been stepping into a new stage of ‘Being my Own Beloved’ and seeing the years of healing through self-portraiture lead to a softening, a quieting of my inner critic and what feels like some deep wounds being healed.

Behind the scenes I’m tucked away in the back corner of my favourite cafe commenting on photos in my E-Course flickr group. I am truly in awe of photos the Be Your Own Beloved participants have been sharing this session. This session they have been so very brave, so vulnerable, so inspiring and I am SO deeply grateful for them and for the fact that I get to do this work in the world. So grateful.

Behind the scenes I’m feeling the absence of having a few close friends moving out of town, feeling the vulnerability of seeking out new friends and gratitude for a book club I recently joined that is so meeting that need. Behind the scenes I am noticing how much time alone I spend and its value, as well as the ways I keep people at bay.

Behind the scenes I have my nose in a book in a cafe, or an audiobook coming through my earphones on yet another long walk. Or I am just walking and letting ideas form (creating that space for ideas feels like an important part of my creative process).

Behind the scenes I am just feeling a bit more quiet than usual. Perhaps its because of the dark season. Behind the scenes I am remembering the tools I’ve cultivated over the years to get through the grey season without going into the blues. Putting winter self-care policies into place.

Behind the scenes I am spilling ideas into my journal and deepening my commitment to this work, both in terms of my own healing as well as the work I’m putting out into the world.

All of these things are kind of hard to put into words and feel way to personal or private, or in some cases too simple to spill into big blog posts. But we all have things going on behind the curtain, behind the scenes and today I just wanted to whisper them to you so you know that if I’m a bit quiet over here, its with good reason. Of healing, of showing up, of being let down, of resilience, of learning, of writing, of hoping, of preparing, of repairing.

How are you, behind the scenes?

November 25, 2013

The Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography!

I’m mighty excited to spill the beans that there is a new class coming for January of 2014!

Introducing: The Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography!

The Rebel’s Guide uses playfulness as a tool to push past our ideas of the ‘perfect’ photo or getting stuck in our left-brain in terms of how to take a photograph (which I think is the cause of many cameras collecting dust on the shelf rather than being made use of). As you know from last weeks post about the 10 Ways to Take Better iPhone Photos, I love the technical side of photography too…yet too often I see the technical side of photography getting in people’s way of falling in love with it.

This class is all about bursting out of the box (hence the Rebel aspect) and exploring photography from a different perspective.

This class is about sparking (or re-sparking) your love for photography.

This class is about learning about photography (and about our cameras) experientially!

In the Rebel’s Guide to Falling in Love with Photography we will:

Shake up our ideas of what we think we need to know as photographers and tap in to what we already know as creative souls.
Do outside the box and oh so much fun activities each day Monday through Friday during the course.
Add ourselves into a few photos during the class (and invite ourselves to see ourselves with kindness)
Experiment, explore, seek, try, be silly, and have so much fun.
Connect with our fellow creativity seekers in the course.
Learn from experiencing and exploring.
Discovery that photography is fun and not to be feared!

I’m intentionally offering this class in January…partially because it feels powerful to start the year falling in love with photography, but also because I know where I live…it is in the middle of the grey season and a month that it might be harder for many of us to keep inspired. So I wanted to fill your inbox with inspirational activities that you can explore no matter what the weather is. This isn’t about falling in love with photography only when the sun is out…this is about being able to get inspired any day, anywhere!

Of course, there will be one self-portrait prompt in the class but I promise that if you’re new to self-portraiture that prompt will be gentle. This is also great way to get to join me for a class even if you aren’t wanting to focus in on self-portraiture but are drawn to the playfulness of my classes!

The fun starts this January but Registration is Open! I hope to see you there! Come secure your spot in the class!

November 22, 2013

10 Ways to take Better iPhone Photos (especially Self-Portraits)

Before we dig into this, I want to say that I actually already think your iPhone Photos are awesome.

To me, its not about how fancy a photo we take, or how technically perfect it is. Its that we pull out our camera and seek out things that inspire us.

This post isn’t actually about telling you what you are doing wrong.

It is about letting you know a few more tools you can do to make your photos shine.

Use the Camera included in the Phone (as opposed to an App)!

Apps are awesome. I wholeheartedly agree.

The challenge with Apps is that often they shrink down the quality of a photo. My preference for taking photos with my iPhone is to use the camera included in the phone as it will save the biggest file size. Not just that, but it actually has some great features that aren’t a part of Apps (and yes, I’ll spill all those tricks in this post)!

I usually tend to shoot in the in-phone Camera and then import it to whichever App I’d like to process it in! This gives us the greatest creative control over our photo.

Not just that, but often the photo is taking much quicker using this camera. Have you tried an app that feels like an old school point and shoot, taking forever to take the photo? Especially if you’re trying to take a photo of motion, using this camera allows us to capture the photo much quicker (which might be exactly what you need to capture that one photo you love.

Explore Focus & Exposure in your iPhone!

You might already know this one, but when you touch the screen when in Camera Mode, you control both focus & exposure! Yes, we can totally just hold our camera up and take the photo without choosing to play around with the focus & exposure, but it can be oh so fun and make our photo even stronger to do so! To play around with this, just touch the screen at different spots and see what happens.

A big part of the exposure of a photo on our iPhone is how it interprets light and dark in our photo. To get to know this aspect of our iPhone camera even more, play around with touching really exposed parts (like the sky in a photo) or really dark parts (like a shadow) and see how it alters the photo as a whole! If I’m looking to find something in a photo to define the exposure for it, I’ll often choose something in between light & dark, between black & white…often touching something on your screen that is green allows for a great exposure.

Again, there is absolutely no need to do this in order to take a great photo, but it allows us just a bit more control which can help take a photo from something that we ‘like’ to a photo we ‘love’!

Use the AutoFocus feature

Now, there is an awesome feature to your iPhone camera that is really subtle (oh how I wish they boldly told you it was there). It is the AutoFocus feature.

Here’s how it works. If you put you put your finger on the screen of your in-phone camera you will see a yellow box appear where you are touching it and telling it to focus. That itself is awesome and is the way to get a ‘DSLR-like’ photo with great aperture and blur in the background!

You can take it a step further and keep holding your finger there and what will likely appear is a little yellow rectangle saying ‘AF Lock’. When that appears you have now locked in your focus. This is SO fun as it allows you to move the camera around without having the focus change. This can be great for getting Macro Photos and also for experimenting with doing intentional blur!

Explore both the Front & Back Facing Cameras.

You might already know this too, but those cameras on the front and back of your phone…they aren’t made equally!

The one that faces you as you are looking at the camera (and makes it easier to take arms length self-portraits) well, unfortunately, that one isn’t nearly as good quality as the one that faces outwards!

Normally, I still use the lesser quality camera but if you are finding that you’d like an even better quality photo (less noise or a less grainy look to it) try using that other camera! If you had (or still have) an old school 3G iPhone, you’re probably well skilled at taking photos (and self-portraits) using that camera anyways.

Just something to remember if you’d like the up the quality of the photo!

Get that Phone Outside (and learn about light)!

This might be the most important one. Photography is all about light and when we are shooting our photos indoors, we simply don’t have as much light to work with.

When we get outside with our iPhone, our photos will just naturally be a better quality…and that might make all the difference in how we feel about the photo!

Not only that, but when we take photos & self-portraits outside, we get to learn more about the ever-changing, incredible world of natural light (if you’d like to learn more, the Light Hunters class is all about just that..exploring & falling in LOVE with Light)!

Look into the Lens!

I think often when taking self-portraits this can make such a big difference in how we see ourselves in a photo. Yes, the lens on an iPhone is little and hard to notice sometimes, but when we look into it…we engage in our photo.

That little detail often makes SUCH a big difference!

Explore HDR

I thought HDR was kind of cheesy (and still think it is sometimes) but that HDR feature on your iPhone…its actually really cool. It takes 2 photos at a time and then layers them to make your photo even crisper, even richer.

This can be so fabulous for landscape & outdoor photos but it can also be amazing for self-portraits and portraits too. It also saves 2 photos to you camera (so you can always pick the non-HDR photo if you’d like) so you have lots of options. Using it regularly does make our storage fill up quicker (as there are double the photos) but often it is SO worth it! It does a way better job than the ‘HDR-ish’ feature on Instagram so if you have preconceived notions of HDR being cheesy (like I did) I recommend putting them aside for a bit and getting playful with this feature as it has helped me take even stronger photos!

Find What ‘Grip’ Works for You!

Another reason we might not love a photo is if it is a bit out of focus. Often that can simply be that our hands shake as we are holding it. So taking a bit to ponder what kind of camera grip works best for us can really help that.

Do you want to hold it with one hand and click the shutter with the other?

Do you want to hold it so you can press the shutter with the volume button (and did you know that was an option)?

There are lots of different ways to grip your camera to make it more stable for you (and you can also get a small tripod for it if that helps too).

Put Your Camera Down and Step into the Frame!

With any camera, including an iPhone, being behind the photo is oh so fun…but when we step in front of the screen something powerful happens. We can be both the photographer and the subject.

Taking arms length photos is fun & fabulous but when we set a timer (like using the Gorillacam App for iPhone) we get to let go of the camera and let our whole selves into the photo. For me this was pivotal in terms of using self-portraiture as tool for healing body image. Letting go of the camera allowed me to really be in my body and take a moment to ground, or move. This made ALL the difference in the way I saw my photo.

Oh, and I know this an iPhone-focused post, but for those of you with Android Phones, you actually don’t need an Android version of Gorillacam as there is actually a built in timer! I don’t know all the features of Androids (as I don’t have one) but from helping people learn about their Androids in workshops this fall, I discovered that there are a lot more amazing features to your phones too than you might know…be sure to check the settings button to see what awesome features your phone has!

Use it to its Capacity (and Take LOTS of photos)

Yes, you might be thinking…if I just get the newest iPhone, that will have me able to take better photos! While it is true that the camera in the iPhone improves with every version of it, if we focus on the quality of the camera as being the only thing that takes a good photo, we are wrong…you take a great photo.

So with all camera gear including iPhones, I think there is great value in using it to its capacity. Get to know all these features, take lots and lots and lots of photos, keep shooting, keep experimenting, keep learning about light, keep getting outside, keep seeking new things to capture, keep turing the camera on YOU to tell your story.

The more photos we take, the more we will get that one we love. If we discount our skill or our value on just one photo (espeically when in comes to self-portraiture), we miss out on the opportunity to keep developing our photographic eye!

Yay! I hope that makes you want to run outside right now & experiment with your iPhone! If you do, be sure to tag #beyourownbeloved on Instagram if it is a self-portrait or tag me @viviennemcm to see a photo inspired by this post (as I’d love to cheer you on)!

Happy iPhone Adventuring!

Oh…and if you are interested in learning more about taking better photos with your DSLR too, come check out the Beloved Camera E-Book!