Gaia Community: Amy's Blog

Digital Photography

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:26:41 -0000

My latest all-consuming passion is digital photography. I'm taking a class, and as part of that we have to keep a photo blog... I find myself posting to it even when I don't have to :-) just because I find the whole concept of 'writing with light' absolutely fascinating.

It doesn't stop when I talked my guy into lettin gme buy a fancy SLR camera, either. I've started to spend our money on lenses and external flashes, additional memory and USB drives to carry images to and from class. I've been lugging a tripod around, trolling the photography section in bookstores (the photo to the left is from a book of flower portraits by Joyce Tenneson - I wrote about it in my photo blog today), and lusting after out of print classics.

But most of all I am looking at everything with an eye to capturing it in visual verse... watching light, stalking it, ready to click my adoration at the perfect moment.

If you like images too, come play with me on Flickr and see the images I've uploaded there. Write to me and tell me about your work.

What book are you reading right now?

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:43:18 -0000

Well, like lots of people I have more than one book on the go at any one time. At the very least I have at least one non-fiction and one fiction to choose from in the pile next to my bed.

Right now my non-fiction is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (I just finished 'The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property' by Lewis Hyde which was fabulous and re-read Anne Lamotts priceless 'Bird by Bird'). Rich Rich Rich.!

For fiction, I'm just starting the 5th of the series of Outlander novels by Diana Gabaldon, The Firey Cross. :-) I also just went to a session at Book Passage with Tracy Chevalier last night. She read from her newest book (on William Blake) Burning Bright and I couldn't help myself from buying it so that's next on my fiction list. The Outlander novels are great fun and - amazingly - have kept my interest in the characters and story strong even through 4 thick volumes. And I deeply love Blake, so imagine Travy's will be good too.

Just for the record, two of my favorite novels of the last few years have been Bel Canto by Ann Patchett and Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Amy

Any Given Wednesday...

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:59:59 -0000

Ok, here it is 10:52 on a workday morning and I'm reading & writing stuff on Zaadz again instead of working. I work for myself, so no one is going to bug me about this unless I don't finish the deadlines on my desk, but that is a distinct possibility if I keep this up, so I won't do anymore to fill out this woefully under-drawn representation of myself except let you know I do have three other blogs, & give you the links.

My main blog is called The Beauty Dialogues. (And I also write two others; one on Art & the Environment reflects my nature-freak side which is actually pretty much right out there anyway, and All is Light is a photo blog I started as part of a digital photography class).

But back to the Beauty Dialogues - this blog is about one of the low-grade obsessions that has been there as a foundation throughout my whole life. I could call it any number of things, of course, but it's always the same thing... the awe and wonder at the center of everything. The absolute perfection of the pattern of wholeness we're all a part of, whether we actually like the way it looks at any given moment or not.

My work in the world is in online design - I design websites and blogs and create the 'look & feel' of the environment for community forums like this - and much of what I am interested in professionally is how this sense of 'beauty' at the center plays out in the world of design.

I don't mean just how 'beautiful' we can make your website look, visually (although I think that has something profound to do with the way we feel when we are in its 'field'), or how well it works and how beautifully form and function fit together (also extremely important :-) but how keeping an awareness of beauty plays out in the way we live the rest of our lives, too. The choices we make about how we go about communicating & doing business with each other, what we notice when we walk out the door in the morning, what is important to us and why.