project life

This week I want to share my weekly Project Life process with you. I’ve been getting lots of technical questions so I thought I could address them all here in this post. So instead of covering Weeks 51 and 52 and my 2012 end page as I’d said last time, I’m just going to share Week 51 in this post, which consists of a double spread and various inserts (remember you can click on each image for a larger version).

1) Documenting (taking photos & journalling)

I take almost all my photos for Project Life with my iPhone 4S. I do not think of my DSLR (a Canon EOS 40D) as my real camera and my iPhone as a second-rate camera. To me, it’s about the moments that I capture rather than the ability of my camera. And honestly, the iPhone camera is a wonderful camera that can do so much more than we often give it credit for. Most importantly, it is the camera that I have with me all the time and, to me, that’s what counts.

One thing I’ve also noticed in the past year is that I tend to take different types of photos if I’m using my DSLR versus my iPhone. With the DSLR, I usually end up with portraits of Rick and the boys: these tend to be close-up shots that capture their expression at a particular point in time (partly because I tend to only use our 50mm prime lens), and usually only when we’re home. With my iPhone, I tend to take a wider variety of photographs: photos of the boys when we’re out and about, photos of landscapes, photos of twilight, up-close shots, self-portraits, photos of my family from a distance, silhouettes, etc. I think this is one of the reasons why my weekly spreads don’t usually look too busy, even though they’re filled with photos: the variety in the photos means that the spreads are not usually overcrowded with close-up portraits, thus giving the eye room to ‘breathe,’ whilst also adding a greater degree of interest.

When taking photos using my iPhone, I usually just use the native camera app as it’s easy to load and it means I have all my ‘raw images’ (so to speak) on my camera roll rather than having to manually save images to the camera roll when using some third party apps. If I have the time, I will use the VSCO Cam app to process my favourite photos on the phone: filters 05 and 07 are the ones that I primarily use. Now and then, I will also use the Afterglow app, which has the advantage of allowing you to adjust the strength of the filter that you apply.

For the last half a year, I’ve been practising the art of taking less photos: rather than snapping up every single frame at every single opportunity, I’ve been learning to only capture the moments that move me. This has been a huge change in the way I photograph: rather than cluttering up my camera and subsequently hard drive with photos that will never get looked at or printed, I’m choosing to take photographs that matter and that tell a story. This also makes the whole Project Life process a lot simpler, because choosing photos becomes a lot easier.

In terms of journalling, I actually don’t write anything down during the week because I use my photos as a way to document things that happen and how I feel at different moments in time. (I keep a running record of things that our boys say and do, but these are usually not included in our main family album, as I save it for their individual albums.) Plus, I know that I can always refer to our calendar to remind me of different things that have happened during the week.

2) Sorting, selecting and processing photos

Every Sunday, I import all photos from my iPhone, Rick’s iPhone and our Canon EOS from that week into Aperture. Using the system I’ve put in place, I re-name all the files, sort them into Aperture projects and folders, tag all the files and rate them if they have been taken on our Canon EOS. This is part of my photography workflow, which I’m planning to write about separately in the coming weeks.

With all the files from the previous week sorted and tagged, I sit down on Monday evenings to choose the photos for our Project Life spread. In Aperture, I create a new album that corresponds to that week of Project Life and then drag a ‘shortlist’ of my favourite photos to that album. This usually doesn’t take very long because I generally already have a good idea of which photos were my favourites from the week.

Generally speaking, I do not tend to include photos from the Canon EOS in our weekly spreads, because I know that I will be going through them at a later stage to create photo books. To me, this makes sense as it helps to draw a distinction between our Project Life album and our photo books – the former is about our everyday, as illustrated by everyday moments captured by the camera that is always with me, while the latter is more focused on portraits and event documentation. (This will probably become clearer after I’ve finished writing about my overall memory keeping framework.) If there is a set of photos I really want to include, I will usually choose to display them as an insert, rather than as part of the main spread.

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Those of you who follow me on Instagram and Facebook will know that I’ve finished our 2011 Project Life album! I could not be more relieved and satisfied. It was indeed a huge (mammoth, really) effort, but it was totally worth it. I now have the entire year documented and presented in two binder’s worth of photos, ready for family and friends to flip through and enjoy. It was such a joy to go through all those photos and re-live some of the tender moments and the highlights from that year. For those of you who have been wondering and asking – yes, it is absolutely possible to use the Project Life system to catch up on past years. And yes, I will share my process here soon, in case you’re looking for some inspiration and guidance. But for now, here are the layouts for Weeks 48 to 50 of 2012. Remember you can click on each photo for a larger image…

Week 48 was when we discovered a new Thai restaurant to go to for our Thursday night family dinners. The gold leaf wall decor was pretty impressive, as was the food. I’m so glad I reached for my phone camera during the dinner, because that was the evening that Jamie decided to bust our some groovy dance moves when he heard the music come on. Seriously, at one point, he was holding his cup in the air above his head and bopping in time to the beat. I laughed so hard my pad see ew almost got stuck in my throat. Even though I didn’t actually capture that moment itself (mainly because I didn’t want to risk missing a second of seeing my little guy dance like he was made for dancing), these other photos serve as a lovely reminder of the occasion. That’s the beauty of photography and documenting life - sometimes you just need to capture a certain aspect of a particular time and it can trigger all the other associated memories. I simply love that about memory keeping.

On the right hand page are some lovely photos from our picnic dinner down at the beach that week, along with an amazing sunset that we saw later that evening as we drove through the national park nearby. I really love that photo of the boys in the top right – it captures a lot of what they’re like when they see other people: they will always hang back and watch, observing with the utmost curiosity and no partiality. There’s an innocence there that I treasure and cherish.

More sweet photos of the boys for Week 49: Jamie becoming the drummer that he was born to be; Angus’ rock star hair, and the three of them having a bit of a laugh in the bath. Fun times.

There is actually a proper photo of me on this page! (Pat self on back.) Rick captured it on our SLR during dinner one evening. There’s nothing particularly special about it – it simply captures me during mealtime, having a cup of tea as I watch the boys’ numerous antics. I like it because it’s exactly that: just a normal shot of me being me. I also love the photos I snapped when I was lying in bed one afternoon having a nap. It’s simple moments like that that make the every day special and worth celebrating.

Lots of photos of the gardenia magnifica from a funeral at our church that week. It’s amazing how such beauty can be so poignant. Looking at these photos now reminds me of the sadness of that week, when I learnt that my friend’s father had died. Yes, life is transient but memories endure forever.

That strip of photos in the middle makes me smile big time. it’s such a reflection of what the boys are like during bedtime. As you can see, they’re each holding blocks in their hands because that’s all we have in the bedroom upstairs – with Jamie ducking out of the photos at one point, most likely to swap his for a different colour. It’s all about those blocks at bedtime here at Casa Mason.

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Next week, I’ll do my best to post about Weeks 51 and 52, as well as my end page for 2012. Exciting, no?

You can read my other Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 210gsm glossy premium photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

No, I’m not having twins (thought that would’ve been awesome too). Instead, I’m stoked to finally be able to share the news that I’m part of Becky Higgins’s 2013 Creative Team for Project Life! I can still hardly believe it myself…

This all began about a month and a half ago on a Friday morning when I staggered downstairs in my semi sleep-deprived state to turn on Play School for the boys. Naturally, I decided to flick on my emails as well, and oh my goodness, there was an email from Becky Higgins. Becky Higgins!? I was almost certain I was dreaming at this point. In her lovely email, Becky explained that she’d noticed my Project Life layouts on Instagram and wanted to invite me to submit for the 2013 Creative Team. I’m quite sure I was squealing at some high-pitched frequency at this point, and no doubt the boys thought their mummy was being “a bit funny.” The amazing thing is that I did not wake up Rick straight away to share my over-the-top excitement (since my dear husband only ever gets to sleep in once in a blue moon), but later, I did make a point of comparing it to him receiving an email from the mastermind behind Land Rover (whoever that may be), inviting him to apply to join their design team – or something like that. He got the idea.

Two weeks later, I sent in my sample layouts and another two weeks later (with many sleepless nights in between, I must admit), Becky emailed me again (I don’t think I will ever tire of seeing Becky’s name in my inbox) to let me know that I was successful in becoming part of the new Creative Team! Wow. Wow!!! (Thankfully, Rick by this point had gotten used to my squeals.) The new team would be made of twenty-four women, Becky said, because they’d received so many awesome applications that they couldn’t narrow it down any further. I spent the next week writing up my profile and my lovely friend Alana from Little Rock Photography took some head shots for me. She wanted teeth – so she got teeth. (I am not such a fan myself, but apparently I look more natural when I show my teeth, so there you go.)

None of us knew who the other team members were, as we were going to find out along with the rest of the world in the big reveal that happened this morning. I would not be lying if I told you that Becky made several appearances in my dreams last night. Then this morning, as soon as I woke up, I grabbed my phone (while Rick went off to settle Jamie, bless my dear husband) and logged in to see all the wonderful emails from Becky, Kari (Becky’s amazing marketing director) and all the other women on the team. Finally, the secret was out and we knew who each other were! Needless to say, I feel extremely honoured to be part of this talented group of ladies. I’m a big fan of some of their work, and it was Elise herself who inspired me to jump into Project Life this year!

For those of you Project Lifers here for the first time, welcome! It is truly lovely to have you here. I only began Project Life myself in May this year, but I love it and am totally convinced it’s the best method of memory-keeping out there.

My style is very simplistic and minimalist. I like to let my photos do the story-telling, and I only add words when I think it is necessary. Never under-estimate the power of the photos that you take. I add text and simple graphic embellishments using Adobe InDesign, and I take almost all my Project Life photos on my iPhone. I print my photos at home using a Canon Pixma MP630, which I can highly recommend. I primarily use the Design A pocket pages, but sometimes I’ll add a 6×12 insert or an 8×8 insert – I tend to use the former when I want to include a blog post that I’ve written and the latter for birthday parties.

In terms of the Project Life albums that I keep, I document our family life on a weekly basis in the ‘main album,’ and I also keep a separate Project Life album for each of our boys, which are updated once a month. I have yet to show any of the boys’ albums on the blog, but I plan to start doing this in the new year. It is just such a wonderful way of keeping a record of their young lives. So far, I have not really used any core kit elements in my albums, but next year, I plan on trying to incorporate some of the cards from the Seafoam kit into the children’s albums.

I can honestly say that I love looking through our 2012 Project Life album, and I can’t wait to start building a new one in 2013. This year has been a wonderful one for us in so many ways, and I’m so thankful to have been able to document it using Becky’s amazing scrapbooking system. What a genius she is. Thank you again to her and Kari for including me as part of the Creative Team for 2013, and I look forward to sharing this next part of my Project Life journey with all of you.

You can read my other Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector; Kodak 170gsm glossy photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

I honestly love working every week on our Project Life family album. It’s so nice to see the week in review, and to be able to jot things down while they’re still fresh in my memory. Also, I know it’s cliche to say this, but how quickly has this year flown by? I feel like it was only yesterday that I decided to take the plunge into Project Life. I still remember the satisfaction and excitement that came with completing my very first weekly layout for Week 14. And now, suddenly, there are only three more weeks to go before I start a new album for 2013! Meanwhile, I still have a rather large back log of layouts to post here on the blog before the new year so don’t be surprised if I start lumping four to five weeks in the one post. (Remember you can click on each image for a larger version.)

Week 37 was the week of Cameron’s fifth anniversary. I filled most of this left hand page with photos that I snapped at the Memorial Gardens. The head shot of Rick and myself is particularly special to me, as we always take one together when we go to the Gardens. This year, we included Jamie in the photo which was very lovely (I like that he’s not looking at the camera). There is also a photo of the lovely package that we received from my beautiful friend Jane who never fails to remember Cameron with us every year. Also, some beautiful stationery arrived from Wit & Whistle that week, I decided to include that in the layout to add an extra ‘pretty’ element to the page.

The right hand page continues the theme of remembering Cameron: there were the flowers I bought in his memory; the clothes I wore the day of his actual anniversary; the breakfast we had at our favourite cafe that morning; some comfort food that I indulged in; a ‘Pa and Jamie’ moment when we went to visit Pa and Nan that afternoon; and of course the birthday cake we ate to celebrate Cameron’s fifth birthday. Just looking at these pages now fills me with such bittersweet emotions. I also included an 8×12 insert in which I pasted the words that I wrote in this post.

Week 38 was smack bang in the middle of my first trimester nausea. In an attempt to entice myself to eat, I went back and forth between whipping up my favourite Chinese dishes and buying meat pies at my local cafe. Soup from my mum’s kitchen was also most welcome. And those shots of Jamie and Pete in the laundry baskets just make me smile big time! I will surely miss having both of them at home with me five days a week next year when Pete goes off to preschool…

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As you can see, I am now on a mission to catch up on my Project Life posts before the year end, so that I can start afresh for 2013! I figure that combining three weeks in one post should do the trick. So I apologise in advance for the bombardment of Project Life goodness! (You can click on each image for a larger view.)

Now that we live just a short drive away from Chatswood in Sydney, we go there almost once a week for dinner with the boys. On this particular occasion, I’d taken my parents there with Pete and Jamie, and dad – being the photography enthusiast that he is – made the most of the opportunity to snap photos of the boys on his Canon EOS. That’s him in the top right, looking all hip and groovy in his beanie. Actually, if you do live near Chatswood, you should note that there is a secret rooftop garden at the Chatswood Concourse which is usually quite empty and just perfect for letting the kids roam free for awhile. (Oh, and that’s Angus doing a double balancing act on his head with both a cup and a toy boat. We’re a talented family, that’s what we are.)

Every time I see this page, I feel all happy and sunny inside. It was actually a winter’s day but the sun was out and the sky was pure blue. Nothing like stopping by the beach for a bit of sand and fun. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t line up the horizon on those bottom two photos, but as an ultimate test of my character, I am not going to fix it. Because like I’ve said before, Project Life is not about perfection.

I didn’t really take that many photos in Week 35, but I did have some photos that I’d taken for my blog, so I simply included them in the album to fill up the left hand page. I ended up really liking the spread for this week: it offers a bit of calm breathing space amongst all the other busy pages.

The sense of serenity continues on the right hand page. One particular thing that strikes me about this layout is that the top right photo of the lake at Akuna Bay seems to mirror the photo I took of our bedroom curtains right underneath it in terms of lighting, colour and composition. I also love the photo of Rick and the boys in the bottom right – with Jamie doing his own thing as always. For someone who’s only one and a half, he’s as independent as they come.

Just random shots of every day life on this left hand page for Week 36. It’s almost impossible for me to get face shots of Pete nowadays, so photos of him from above as he climbs around on the couch just have to do…

We discovered the amazing lookout from North Head Sanctuary (near Manly) on our day off that week. I remember it being a cold and blustery day, so we stayed inside the car for most of it as we drank in the view. I also remember craving hot soup (ah, first trimester…) so when I saw a small cafe tucked away amongst the bushes, I raced over and waited for almost twenty minutes while the chef seemingly made minestrone soup from scratch (sadly, it wasn’t as good as the ones from a can, in my opinion). As for that pork chop and pasta dish which Rick made that week – it was just divine. I love my husband and I love his cooking!

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I’ve been noticing for a while now that my Project Life approach is becoming increasingly simplistic. Most weeks, the layout consists of just photos and hardly any text at all. Initially, I worried about this and fretted that perhaps I should be journalling more. But as I flip through the album, this is what I’ve concluded: photos really do speak a thousand words. When I lay my eyes on any photo in the album, I am able to recall the entire scene, the mood, the circumstances, the emotions and all the other details from that singular moment in time – without a single written word. So let me encourage you today – don’t underestimate the power of the photos that you take.

You can read my other Project Life posts here.

Materials used: Becky Higgins Design A page protector;Kodak 170gsm glossy photo paper. All photos printed on the Canon MP630 Pixma.

(Linking up with The Mom Creative.)

It seems like a lifetime ago now, but Week 31 marked the beginning of our family holiday back in August. It was such a wonderful time. No commitments. No deadlines. Nowhere we had to be. Just the five of us, and fourteen fun-filled days of being together.

Unlike most of our family holidays, we opted to stay at home this time – partly to save money and partly because I couldn’t be bothered to pack for two adults and three small children, if you must know the truth. It worked out really well though: we had the beaches within five minutes drive; we treated the boys to a train trip; we had everything we needed around the house; I could do scrapbooking whenever I wanted; we made multiple road trips down to the Southern Highlands; and best of all, Rick had fun setting up tents and hoochies for the boys in our backyard.

For those two entire weeks (and the two weeks that followed), I didn’t work on our Project Life at all. Mainly because I hadn’t quite worked out how best to document our holiday. And so I procrastinated. And procrastinated some more. (I’m good at that.) In the end, after endless cups of coffee, I decided that I would use my normal weekly format, with additional inserts where appropriate and possibly even two spreads per week if I couldn’t fit it all onto one spread. I was really happy with this decision, and will probably stick to this for future holidays, at least for similar ‘staycations’ anyway.

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