A Beautiful Body Project-Jade Beall

Looking through Jade Beall's photos from the Beautiful Body Project stirs many emotions for me. Joy, love, respect, hope, are a few all balled up in one big lump in my throat. The beauty of them makes my heart soar, my gut tighten, and my eyes water. Everytime. I love them, and want to plaster them all over my house. They are a reminder of what true beauty is.

Everyday as women we are fed an idea of what beauty is; a plastic, polished, unattainable version of what we should look like, but never can. 

Jade Beall's work is like a breath of fresh air. My heart sighs when I look through her photographs. This is beauty. The scars, stretch marks, cellulite, saggy breasts and loose tummy's are apart of us. They are real and tell a part of our story.

Like the scar on my left knee from running, jumping, dancing, skipping, and years of playing hard and joyfully.

The chicken pox scars from when I had THE worst case of chicken pox when I was twelve, and my baby brother who also had chicken pox at the same time as me, but only had four spots that lasted a few days and were gone. 

The tattoos that I got when I was 15, 16 and 18, telling me of where I was at that time in my life.

The stretch marks on my thighs and belly from growing three beautiful lives inside me.

The saggy breasts from feeding and nourishing my children.

These are all me, and are beautiful. I wouldn't change them or give them up for anything in the world. They tell the story of where I have been and set the foundation of where I can go.

Jade's mission with the Beautiful Body project is "To Inspire Women Around The World To Feel Beautiful Just As You Are Through A Series Of Books & A New Media Platform Free From Digital Augmentation, Focusing On Your Inspiring Stories About Your Bodies. "

The Beautiful Body Project is supported by crowd funding. Jade does the photoshoots for free, with the funding going towards creating the book and further volumes.

I love this quote from the site:

A Beautiful Body project is movement of women coming together to tell their stories and celebrate their ever-changing bodies so that future generations of women can live free from self-suffering.

I love it! I love it all, and strongly encourage you to visit A Beautiful Body Project's page and scroll through the photos to see the beauty for yourself.

You can also visit Jade Beall's website to see more of her work.

The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer Giveaway!!

I am very excited to share this beautiful book with you today, called The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer, by Katie Evens.

I love books and can never have enough. Especially a book I can learn from. Last year for Mother's Day Rob and I decided it was time for me to move up from my point and shoot camera, to a DSLR, so we went out and purchased a new Nikon D3000. A great introductory camera. Recently, I decided to take my camera off Auto and switch to Manual. That was a very exciting move for me.

With the help from The Key to Taking Pictures Like a Professional Photographer, I am working on moving past just snapping a picture, and taking time to frame, taking lighting into consideration, and am actually starting to notice the difference between good and not so good lighting. I can also play with the adjustments of ISO, white balance, aperture, f-stop, and have an idea of how they work.

My next move is to purchase a prime lens. At the moment I have the lens my camera came with, which is fine, but I really want to experiment with bokeh. Also, I am in love with photos where the subject is in focus but the back ground is blurry. With my current lens, that just isn't possible. My aperture is always fully open, but there isn't much blur, if any at all. This is another way the book has helped me. Where do I even start with lenses?

I am also braving photo editing. Not a lot, because I still find it confusing, but at least I'm making some small attempts. We have Photoshop, and there are so many tools, and I don't know how to use any of them. Most of my photo editing is done with Rob, because he is more familiar with the program than I am. There are some great tips for adjusting the colours, saturation, cropping etc in the book as well. I'm just not completely there yet. Just working on figuring out my camera and how to take a picture is my focus at the moment. I hope to graduate to photo editing in the near future:)

Here is a peak at the table of contents so you have an idea of what else you can expect to learn from this book.

Today I am very excited to be able to giveaway a copy of this beautiful and helpful book to one lucky winner.

Blog Giveaway Directory

Taking it off auto

This past weekend, I decided it was time to make the move. I took my camera off auto and switched to manual mode. I was nervous and apprehensive, but I did it. I mean it IS digital, so what's the big deal?

I played with the aperture and, ISO a bit, but mostly the aperture. Adjusting the shutter speed to meet the light requirement for the aperture setting.

I like having the aperture open all the way for a blurry background, but with my camera, or maybe it's the lens, I have to be very close to the subject for the background to blur.

Here is a picture of Rob with the aperture fully open. The background is not blurred at all.

Same aperture, closer to Rob. The background is blurred.

Here is a photo I took months ago. Same aperture, but very close to the subject. The background is very blurred. So now I know how to get that look.

Here are some photos taken on the weekend that I just wanted to share because they are of my boys, so are of course more for the cute factor:

They love jumping off of things.

When I look at this picture, I can't imagine how he landed this.

King of the mountain.

Look at that beautiful face.

Having a little rest after all that jumping. 

Jessica White Photography

Adorable pictures by Jessica White Photography of her darling daughter in a Love In Everything sundress: