New colors

I decided that our living room needed an update. I had hardly noticed that we had started the third month of the year already when my grey, red and brown pillows were still sitting cofortably on our couch. They screamed "Christmas" at me and at some point that just wasn´t funny anymore!
And with the weather being so incredibly lovely and springy (is that even a word? I guess it is now!) I started thinking of what colors I could decorate our living room in.
Now I am a big fan of turquoise and a coolish blue, maybe mixed with green but I decided I wanted to try something new this year (or at least partially new since I threw turquoise and grey in the mix).
I LOVE yellow as a color but could probably never wear it because it would just make me look sick (I unfortunately have that skin tone).
After I had forced let Danny to buy a mustard jacket already I thought I could just as well put some yellow/mustard pillows on our couch (that way he would blend in oh so lovely when he would come home from work. He´d probably be too warm sitting on the couch in his jacket but you gotta do what you gotta do, right!?).


So here´s the result:

3 Tips on establishing a healthy work routine

Within those past months I have heard of so many people having had a burnout, being in the middle of one or on the verge of having one that I started wondering whether the feeling of being overwhelmed by one´s job and/or life is due to pressure that either our society or the individuals put on themselves or whether it is due to a lack of ideas how to healthily balance out your (work-)life.
When my husband then felt like HE was on the verge of a burnout (and those people knowing him know that he can take A LOT) and took a few days off of work for us to go on a holiday, I had the idea to write a blogpost about burnout.

Especially as freelancers you can easily get overworked because you don´t have a boss telling you to work appropriate hours and take a holiday every now and then.
It´s so easy to get carried away and wanting to edit "just a few pictures" for me often ended in editing a whole session for hours.
So I´ve come up with a few things you may install in your workflow and weekly schedule to make sure that your health stays stable.



1. If you haven´t yet, install a weekly schedule. This may seem ridiculous but it´s very good for one thing: Getting appropriate times of breaks in between which you need to work more effectively!
It is so easy once your "in the flow" to keep editing pictures until your eyes hurt (I know the feeling...) but why not install special hours for editing pictures and - if you need something to keep you on track set an alarm clock - then take a ten minute coffee break and browse through your favorite magazine.
Making time for breaks also gives me a huge boost of motivation. When I don´t feel like starting something cause I know it will take endless hours, I limit the time to work on it to two hours. That way the time frame is limited and to me that makes it easier to find the motivation to start and work through those two hours to get the "reward" (coffee, tea, a short walk, a piece of chocolate, ...) after.

2. Do something completely unrelated to photography. Go running. Go horse-back riding. Go swimming. Find a TV show you enjoy. Learn a new language. Really the possibilities are endless!
And purposely leave your camera at home (especially when you go swimming and don´t have any of those fancy under-water-cameras...). Take some time to get your head free and open for new inspiration in order to come back to your workspace and work more efficiently!

3. Set a certain time that you close your computer. For the rest of the day. Now I know that there will be days when that´s not possible, when you´ve numerous weddings and/or portrait shoots in the cue waiting to be edited.
But make it a rule to not work until late at night. You can always bend it when necessary, but make giving yourself time to relax the rule.



So, maybe this wasn´t something new to you but maybe you needed to hear that once more. I know I also have to keep reminding myself of thes things.

This made my head hurt

Today I came across this amazingly talented and creative photographer. His name is Romain Laurent and he is from France.
As I looked through the pictures on his website I came across his series called "tilt". 
Each picture basically shows a model that stands somewhat upright in front of a tilted background with the position of her feet and everything totally in place.
Looking at these pictures really made my head hurt as I was trying to figure out HOW in the world he did that.
And I bent my head and checked out feet, dresses, shadows and it just made sense.
I really was close to getting up to see whether I could stand skew like that. I guess that would be something you´d really like to see, right?? :D 
Aaaaanyway, I couldn´t just settle with not knowing how he created the pictures so I started searching google.
It didn´t take me long to find what I was looking for.

Here is an example of one of his pictures:

 Picture by Romain Laurent.

You can check out the whole series HERE.

And THIS is the link to the article in which his post processing tips and tricks are revealed.

Now I will go lean against a wall... :D