Our Shoppe Gallery

While celebrating our weekends, and in the spirit of our global collaboration and community of support, we are featuring our personal art as 'Vision to Verb' notecards.

 

Our hope is that they'll inspire you to join with us in our support of KIVA - empowering people around the world with start-up business loans.

Guilty Pleasures

Did you know that some of our "guilty pleasures" are actually good for our health and well-being!

I'll never forget the day I walked into a hospital a few years back and saw the poster, "Chocolate is Good for Your Heart," hanging right there on the wall.  The caveat was, of course, dark chocolate, at a minimum of 70% cocoa.  And in moderation.

Don't you love it when we have "professional permission" to indulge!

Most of you know that I moved myself, lock, stock and barrel, from America to the Netherlands in early December of 2009 to follow the love of my heart.  I had spent the entire year getting rid of everything I owned except the few treasures of my life that could be packed into 2 TruckPacks, 4'x4'x4'.  It was harrowing but invigorating.  I lost 10 pounds, reaching my 115 from high-school days.

It so happens that I had a "guilty pleasure" for many years of my adult life that stood me in good stead for my move.  I have no memory from whence it came but I got into collecting sheets of USA stamps.  By 2009, I had almost every sheet produced back to the 1930s, hundreds of them in myriad albums.  I would buy them off of eBay or at stamp auctions, one sheet at a time, usually between $3-10.  Like I said, it was a guilty pleasure. 

Little did I know I was collecting those sheets of stamps for my move to the Netherlands!  Religiously, relentlessly, I scanned every sheet, uploaded them to eBay, and sold every one, often at 10 times their face value.  They alone gave me enough money to buy our new car outright once I moved.  Someone asked me if I hated to see those stamps go.  Are you kidding me?!

Besides the stamps, I sold electronics and books and DVDs and anything I could get my hands on.  I LOVE eBay and Amazon.com.  They were my saviors, adding much-needed money for my move.  After the estate sale in November and then selling my car, it all was done.

Here I was, sitting on all that money earmarked for moving to Europe and buying the things we would need to set up a new home.  Astrid, too, was downsizing after her divorce.  We would need to consolidate what we salvaged from each of our past lives and build something new that represented us.

Now, if you're still following me, here's THE guilty pleasure I'm getting to.  Once I stopped all the packing and selling and was finally breathing again before the move, I mentioned to Astrid that I was toying around with the idea of buying a macro lens.  It had been on my "want list" for a long time.  But how could I reconcile doing that before the move, knowing every last penny would be important, especially considering the dollar-to-euro conversion.  I knew the lens would be cheaper in America, but ...still!

With adamant "professional permission" to indulge from Astrid, I just did it!  Blow all caution to the winds, right?  What she said made sense:  "Ginnie, call it your reward for what you've just been through the last 12 months!"

Funny thing is, I didn't start using the lens till this past month!  The above image is one of the first I took when I had no clue what I was doing.  It's been a steep learning curve but it sure has been fun, as any guilty pleasure should be!

So, you know I'm gonna ask you:  What is your guilty pleasure?  HA!

On What Grabs Our Attention

They say (as they're wont to do) that after you get married, you should continue doing those things that attracted you to each other if you want your marriage to last.  Since Astrid and I met each other through our mutual photography site (Shutterchance) and then started doing photo hunts together in Holland, which we have no intention of stopping, I'm guessing we'll be happily married forever.  I like that thought.

Interestingly, when we compare our photographic styles, we've discovered this difference:  I tend to go for the big picture and she for what we call the macro/close-up shots.  I have a theory about that.  Most of what I see now in my new home in Europe is new to me.  I'm still looking at the forest.  Astrid is used to the forest and so looks more at the trees.  Little by little, beetje bij beetje, I, too, am looking at the trees.  In non-photographic terms, micro (close up) vs. macro (big) seeing.  In photographic terms, wide-angled vs. macro/micro (interchangeable) seeing.  I actually like both.

In a past life years ago, I had the training and opportunity to translate and interpret ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, mainly from the Bible, to address questions about the role of women in the conservative, traditional church (i.e. are they allowed by holy scripture to preach!) and whether or not homosexuality is condemned by Almighty God.  It intrigues me that the parallels to wide-angled and macro photography are similar.  Any ancient text read out of context falls prey to what we call prooftexting.  That is, you can find a Biblical quote/verse somewhere that will support almost anything you want to believe.  But if you want to be faithful to the text and understand what the original author meant, you are required to interpret it in the historical and cultural context in which it was written..not in your own 21st century context.  Contextual criticism vs. prooftexting.

Long before V&V was created, I was inspired by Frida's macro images.  Others of you also excel at them, I'm sure.  Usually I can extrapolate out from them and quickly guess the larger context.  But every once in awhile I will see something I simply cannot figure out.  Usually I'll guess or will read other comments to get a clue.  If still in a daze, I'll simply ask:  WHAT IS IT!  If I'm brave enough, I'll guess out loud and put my neck on the line, loving it when I'm right and laughing out loud when I'm wrong.  DUH!  Of course that's what it is!

My image today is basically a macro/micro image (from my 300 mm lens) that's probably a no-brainer.  It doesn't need the forest to "interpret" the tree.  Where do you typically see barbed wire?  And when you see this caught in it, what can you eliminate from all the possibilities?  Slowly you start to build the context...the forest...from what you see and  don't see (it's not sheep's wool, for instance).  You may not know where or when, but that may not be important.

So, when you pick up your camera, what grabs your attention?  Is it the big picture or the close-up shot?  Or both!  And how does it inform your world view of life in general?  Or does it?

(Speaking of world view, today I fly back to Holland from Atlanta...via Chicago and London.  Gotta keep that marriage in tact!)