Radiate 8-WEEK JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH THE LENS OF YOUR CAMERA

Transcription

1 YOUR 8-WEEK JOURNEY OF SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH THE LENS OF YOUR CAMERA

2 Somewhere inside of ME there s been an inner glow ready to shine, it s just taken me a while to find it. Sometimes, I like to close my eyes and remember when the definition of ME was simple enough to be wrapped up in the results of those cheesy Seventeen magazine personality quizzes. Who is your celebrity soul mate? What does your wardrobe say about you? What is your organization style? Are you a natural leader? I most certainly was not a leader in my high school years, but for some reason I had the brilliant idea that I should run for President of the Latin Club my senior year. Yes, Latin club. Carpe Diem, right? You are now free to label me a complete and utter dork now. With a capital D. And, if you decide right here and now that we can t be friends anymore I certainly won t blame you. I took 4 years of Latin in high school. By senior year I adored my teacher and my classmates. I was a shoe in to be President. That is, until the captain of the football team decided last minute that he wanted to run too. I ll let you guess how the story ends. It wasn t pretty. And that was just it, everything I did in high school seemed to come up short. I wanted nothing more than to land the lead in the school play but ultimately was always cast as the old lady with only a line or two. I longed to sing solo in the school choir but always ended up in the ensemble. I wanted to be promoted to manager at my retail job but couldn t seem to move past cashier. I wanted to be asked out to the prom, instead I was set up and stood up mid-way through the night. To shake off disappointment I would go for long weekend drives, blasting Third Eye Blind and No Doubt on the stereo, singing at the top of my lungs. I d hide behind my frizzy mess of long curly hair, oversized flannel shirts, and green velour Doc Marten high tops. I d compose song lyrics while up locked up in my bedroom at night and lament that no one understood me. Hell, back then I didn t understand ME either. As a Personality Psychology major in college, I found those quizzes became a tad more complex, but added a bit more clarity too. ME as labeled by the psychology experts was now called ENFJ. Extroverted, Intuitive. Feeling. Judging. Or more commonly labeled, The Teacher. Not surprisingly I fit the description to a tee and I slowly discovered the leader locked up inside of me just waiting to get out.

3 When I flat out was rejected from the college choirs I joined a philanthropy group, was elected their Vice President my second week as a member, and built a mentoring program (which 10 years later is still going strong) that paired our youth members with the elder members looking to share their knowledge of the world. The skills I honed as an ENFJ in college led me to enter the workforce as an elementary school teacher, marry the nice boy I met when I was 17 working as that cashier in retail, adopt a kitten or two from the local animal shelter, and truly begin to carve out my place in this vast world of opportunity. But each year that followed layered on a new level of complexity and commitment. And somewhere along the journey from teenage angst to confident adult I lost sight of ME. I could still define myself based on societal roles: teacher, wife, friend, mother, philanthropist but was that truly ME? This battle with self became the most apparent a few years later after the loss of our first daughter, Bella Rose, during week 20 of her pregnancy. I had put my everything into becoming a mother, the ultimate role of sacrifice. Once she was gone all that was left were broken pieces of ME. So I made it my personal mission to re-discover who I truly was. And I used my camera to make it happen. Something as simple as taking a photo helped to visually represent the rich texture of ME here and now. It made me more aware and grateful for what I have. And it forced me to take time away from others so I could get reacquainted with myself. We haven t all been through the loss of a child but we each have SOMETHING we are battling as the layers of our life become richer, deeper, busier, and more complex. When was the last time you carved out a block of time just for you? Went for that long drive with the stereo on full blast? Made a little bit of space to listen to your thoughts and nourish your soul? Locked yourself in the bedroom to write out those song lyrics just waiting to be released? Carved out a special time and place to explore your passions? is the e-course that will map out your journey towards self-discovery from behind the lens of a camera. Each week on this eight-week journey we ll pair a photography assignment with an exercise that encourages getting reacquainted with YOU. will give you that gentle nudge to get out and lead a more mindful, present, fulfilled life by understanding the texture of who YOU are today, tomorrow and always. Are you ready to re-discover your inner glow?

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5 It s Freshman year of high school. I m in English class and we re finishing up a huge unit study on poetry. ~ 1 ~ We re given a final project to complete and we re presented with two options to turn in for a grade: either dissect and analyze famous works of poetry or write a poetry book of our very own. That evening, Shades of Grey, my poetry book was born. I began keeping diaries and journals when I was in the second grade. I adored filling pages and pages and pages with strings of words just oozing with emotion. I embraced the Shades of Grey project passionately and released my creative energies, poetry slam style, on the pages of that book. No rhyming stanzas for this girl. I was pure inspiration and no nonsense when it came to my book. I artistically cut letters from newspaper ads and titled each poem to represent the jaggedness, inconsistency, and monochromatic feeling of my world. Twenty poems later, my teenage anger, jealously, and loneliness were soulfully poured out onto pages of my black and white, hard-cover, spiral bound book for my English teacher to grade. I got an A+. Teachers have a sixth sense for raw emotion. Years later, tucked away in a Rubbermaid storage bin, that book is buried in a cluttered mess of my high school memories. A reminder of that dark, dismal, and very GREY time in my life. Fortunately, the Shades of Grey version of me is a thing of the past. She still comes creeping in every now and again, but as her path to self-discovery has grown, she s been upgraded to a much more diverse color palate. Color (or the lack thereof) surrounds us always. We are presented with visuals to process all day long. The rooms where we spend hours of our day. The stores we frequent. The signs, symbols, and objects we encounter in our daily interactions. They all have color. And those colors can make a HUGE impact on our mood and behavior as we process each one. Just think about all the color related phrases out there and how they make you feel: The grass isn t always greener on the other side. She s the black sheep of the family. Are you seeing red? He s a true blue friend.

6 It surprises me sometimes that even my teenage self had an intuition for the prominent role color plays in how we feel about our surroundings, about our relationships, and about ourselves. What does your palette look like these days? Color is easily one of the most prominent features in our day to day lives that impacts emotion, disposition, and personality. For this assignment, we re going to focus on color preference and its link to you and your world. Before you pick up your camera, you re going to be doing a bit of journaling, either in your own journal or in the notes space provided on the next page. I have a few prompts I d like you to think about. Use the color guide here as a reference while you work. red excitement, energy, passion, desire, speed, strength, power, heat, love, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence, aggression, intensity pink romance, love, friendship, femininity, truth, passivity, goodwill, emotional healing, peace, calming, affection, caring, nurturing, delicate joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, dishonesty, cowardice, betrayal, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard yellow peace, tranquility, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, cold, technology blue orange energy, balance, warmth, enthusiasm, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant, demanding of attention green nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, vigor, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune royalty, spirituality, mobility, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, arrogance purple earth, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, stability, simplicity, comfort brown ~ 2 ~

7 Ready? Grab your favorite pen and let s get started. 1) What color do you associate with each day of the week? Write those colors below. Describe how each one makes you feel. Do you feel different color on each day or do they all feel the same? Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday 2) Congratulations! Today is your wedding day. Describe your dream day in terms of color. What color will your bridesmaids wear? What color are the flowers? What colors fill the ceremony and reception areas? How do these colors make you feel? ~ 3 ~

8 3) What colors have you chosen to paint your home? Decorate the walls? What made you choose them? 4) What colors fill your closet? What color are the garments you find yourself wearing the most? Do you have a signature color? If so, how do you feel when you wear it? ~ 4 ~ Do you find a common theme in all your color associations listed above? Does one color tend to recur over and over again? Or does one of the colors speak to you above all the others? Write that color here. If you have a secondary color you d like to consider write that one here. These will be your focus colors for our assignment.

9 It s not time to pick up your camera just yet. Before you begin snapping away, let s continue our journey by searching for the color inspiration that screams YOU. To do this we re going to head over to two of my favorite color websites: Colour Lovers and Design Seeds. On the Colour Lovers site I personally like to explore the palettes that are most loved, but feel free to browse the site any way that feels right to you. Once you ve taken some time to browse the palettes on both sites, and using your focus colors as a guide, choose the palette you are most drawn to. Save it to your computer if you d like, or save it to memory so it can be recalled as you complete your photo assignment. Your photo assignment Now that you ve found YOUR colors, it s time express that palette in a series of photos. Maybe your palette is bursting with the colors of a radiant sunset. Or perhaps it s hidden in a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers. ~ 5 ~ Maybe it contains the hues only a lovely hike through the woods can provide? Or could it be revealed in the vibrant shades of the fruit salad you whipped up with dinner last night? Can you wrap all the colors of your palette nice and neatly into one photograph? Or will you try to photograph each shade as a separate image? The choice is yours.

10 How many ways can you photograph these Shades of You? Take time to embrace your color palette and seek out those places where they bring you the most joy. Remember to take your camera along with you and preserve those colors in images. Save them and then find a way to use them. Display them as your computer s desktop wallpaper. Print them out, frame them, and hang them in a space where you could use a boost of color. Let them lift you up. Let them soothe your soul. Let them shine. Be proud of your beautiful work! I d love it if you share your Shades of YOU with me. Send your palettes and images to b@berylaynyoung.com. And, to continue your journey of self-discovery through photography, you ll want to register for the next session of : Rediscover Your Inner Glow. Just click here to get started. xo Beryl ~ 6 ~