Well, I'm back down on Planet Earth! I just returned from BlogHer15 in New York and it was quite a trip!
I don't mean the train trip or the crazy cab ride; I mean it was an almost surreal mental trip, seeing my winning photograph on a continuous-loop slideshow with the other six winning photographs, blown up onto two movie screens on each side of the stage at the New York Hilton. My little picture of apples, super-sized in the Big Apple! Yep, that was definitely trippy...
The award inspired me to keep on aiming for pictures of simple, natural beauty.
Here's something else--or rather, somebody--who inspired me at BlogHer: Christy Turlington Burns.
(That's her on the left, at one of the BlogHer panels.)
I remember, years ago when I still lived in New York, going to a little vegetarian restaurant way downtown and seeing Christy Turlington eating dinner with a friend across the room. This was when she was one of the top supermodels in the world, so it was a shocker to see her out-and-about and mingling with mere mortals, low-key with little makeup, yet still gorgeous in an other-worldly way that only supermodels can attain. She still is gorgeous today, but now she's the founder of Every Mother Counts, a non-profit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother--which makes her even more beautiful.
Not a life-saver, but nonetheless inspiring to me at BlogHer: Gwyneth Paltrow.
I know that some people love Gwyneth and some people can't stand her, but I'm in the first camp. I like a successful girl with a healthy sense of slightly sarcastic humor, somebody who is not deterred by negativity or big bumps in the road of life, and Gwyneth delivered the goods at BlogHer. She was asked how she handled life with her children while her marriage to musician Chris Martin was breaking up, and I loved her response:
“One of the things I said to them originally when we were separating was, 'You know, Daddy and I are famous and there’s going to be a lot of stuff out there, and I can’t control what you’re going to see and what you’re not going to see, and what your friends are going to say or ask, but you know what it is to be here in this house. You know what’s real. You know how much we love you. You know we love each other.' I think they understand there’s a difference between the outside world and the inside world.”
Even for us non-celebs, I think it's always good to remember that much of what we see in the media is just hype and hysteria.
I took some library books with me to New York (because there's just no way I'm going anywhere without books), and these are the ones that inspired me the most--all blending art with science, one of my favorite combinations:
- Chris Hadfield's You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station. Hadfield is the Canadian astronaut who famously sang a version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" while still in space. (That video has over 26 million views on YouTube--it's in the "Related Articles" section at the bottom.) His book surprised me because I found his writing and photographic views of the world to be downright poetic.
- How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum by Keri Smith. I'm going to refer back to this book whenever I'm creatively stuck. (Keri Smith rocks.)
- Dragonflies: Magnificent Creatures of Air, Water, and Land by Pieter Van Dokkum. (Extraordinary macro photography of very cool bugs--that's right up my alley!)
And last but most definitely not least, the highlight of my trip was meeting Jayla, the three-week-old daughter of my long-time friend, Caren. Just look at that little face!
Wow. Just wow.
It brought me right back to when my own children (now 8 and 11) were this teeny-tiny. Time flies, indeed.
Babies are always inspiring to me because they're so new to the world, so fresh and flawless, and the very essence of hope is right there in their eyes, gazing right back at us, and glimmering.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Pssssssst! Early Bird enrollment for the next session of my online photography course, The Art of Photography: How to Take Your Pictures to the Next Level, ends just one week from today, 7/31/15 (12:00 midnight EST). Save $15 by enrolling early and join me in August to create some inspiring pictures of your own!
*******************************************************************************************************************
© 2015 by Joy Sussman/JoyfullyGreen.com LLC. All rights reserved. All photos and text digitally fingerprinted and watermarked. Please do not use any of my photographs without asking me first for permission at [email protected] and then clearly linking back to this site with photo credits. Site licensed by Creative Commons.
Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Joyfully Green via email or RSS reader: just click here.
Comments