Oh my gosh. That was simultaneously freeing and, well, hard. I’ve never limited myself to 36 clicks of the shutter before. At least not on digital! But today that’s exactly what I did!

I’m taking a breakout course on Clickin Moms/Click Photo School (my phototog community) called “Slow Your Roll: Film Secrets for the Digital Shooter” and so far so good! Cami is an excellent teacher, and quite frankly, I think we might be the same person in different bodies with different families. 😉

Lately, I’ve been noticing me falling into the trap of “overshooting” and not really taking the time to think about each individual shot before hitting the shutter. Cause it’s digital, so why not? Well, I’ll tell you why not- firing off 10 frames per second and crossing your fingers that one will turn out exactly as you’d hoped is a really crappy approach to photography. LOL! Quite frankly, I think it’s lazy. And I really don’t want to be lazy about my work. Man, this class couldn’t have come at a better time, huh?

Anyways, I was going to wait for the “perfect” time to do this exercise, but I decided that that’s ridiculous and part of my storytelling approach has always been embracing the mess.  So that’s what I did.  😉  Every day this summer, Nadia has created a routine where we wake up, have breakfast, play with Natasha, play Uno together for exactly 3 rounds once sis takes her nap, and then she heads upstairs to our loft- which I converted into a craft room/spare bedroom/school room- and plays school with her toy friends.  It’s the cutest because I can listen from our Great Room downstairs, and hearing her mimic her teachers at school cracks me up because it’s done so accurately.  LOL! Normally, I leave her be…  But today, I went upstairs with my camera and she “let me” take exactly 36 shots of her doing her thing.  Granted, I think she hated the fact that I temporarily invaded her private classroom (haha!), but she allowed me to quietly observe and then politely ushered me out once she heard the 36th click.  It’s not “perfect” but I really REALLY enjoyed it…  and also loved not having 538 photos to cull through of duplicate shots that aren’t keepers.  😉

… also, do you know how I knew it was time to wrap it up? She chose the book “Llama Llama Mad At Mama” for story time. HAHA! I hear ya, kid. I’m done.

I think this new 36 shot approach is going to be gold for ALL of us. 😉
XO