Last summer I was a mentor for an organization called Our World in Pictures. Although the workshops are generally during the summer, occasionally there are other exhibits or events as well. Here are a few shots I took while volunteering. It was a small crowd but the kids didn’t seem to care!

Local artist Luella Pavey was on hand to help the kids out and have a little fun of her own!

I hope everyone out there had a good V-day! Heath and I aren’t active participators in the Valentine’s Day tradition, we are mushy gushy in love every day of the year! Just kidding, at least about the mushy, gushy part. Heath and I are constantly telling each other, “I love you”, were just not overly romantic. We try to have a date night every week just so we can reconnect after a busy week. Friday night we went out to the Pub and then went to see The Wolfman. I hadn’t seen the original version so I don’t have anything to compare it to but I thought it was pretty good.

I was pretty exited on Valentine’s Day about getting to participate in Love in Lex to benefit the Step by Step. Heath and I were able to get our portrait taken by the wonderful and lovely Morgan Day.

This is our first nice pictures together since we got married! Since I enjoy taking pictures of happy couples you’d think that perhaps there would be more pictures of  us together but that would mean one thing-that I would have to be in front of the camera, someplace I’m not actually all that comfortable. Morgan could attest to this as I completely broke out into a fit of giggles after we sat on the Vespa.

I hope that everyone had a nice, relaxing day with their loved ones, no matter how you celebrated. Don’t forget about the *free* wedding photography contest. The February 28th deadline is fast approaching! And, if you get a chance check out this cool wedding site!

Next Sunday come on out to Buster’s for free portraits and Babycakes Cupcakes! I was fortunate enough to meet Morgan of Morgan Day Photography this past week. She is a fantastic local photographer  on a mission to make life more romantic and adventurous (you can read more here). Love in Lex is an opportunity to get a great pic of you and your loved one and to show single moms in Lexington some love. Click on the photo below for more info and click here to RSVP! I’m bringing hubby with me so we can get our pic taken, it’s been years since we’ve had a nice portrait together, so if you go, stop by and say hi!

Here is the invite to the show that one of my fiber pieces got into. The show is taking place in St. Louis, Missouri and it’s my first national show! Click here if you want to see the program for the show. Heath and I will be heading there for the reception on Friday and to explore the city the rest of the weekend. It will be the first visit to the city for both of us and I am exited that we’ll get to experience it together, not to mention that it will be one great big photo opp!

Our latest adventure for OWIP was on self-portraiture. The kids were given a questionnaire to fill out before the lesson that asked some things about themselves:

1. What makes you unique? What is the best thing or feature about yourself?

2. What features or interests about yourself make you who you are?

3. Are you into music, sports, movies? How can you show your own individual personality and character in your photos?

Juwaun said this about himself in response:

1. My personality is my best feature.

2. My imagination and my style make me who I am.

3. Yes I am into sports and I could take a picture of me playing basketball.

After the questions were answered all of the kids went out with their mentors and directed them on how they wanted their self-portraits taken. As I am sure most of the mentors are not used to having people tell them how to take a picture, it was a lesson for them as well! Here are Juwaun’s-

Juwaun didn’t mention this as one of his best features but he also has a great smile

Today was our first discussion about the kids work from the previous two adventures, the scavenger hunt and Tuesday’s lesson on perspective. It was a laid back kind of critique aimed at showing the kids their images for the first time and being very encouraging of the work they did. We tried to get the kids talking as much as possible, asking a lot of open ended questions about their experiences those days. Here are the images from my mentee, Juwaun.

Scavenger hunt photos:

Perspective photos:

To see some pictures from the other kids involved visit the official OWIP blog at http://www.ourworldinpictures.com/e7center/ Next weeks lesson is on self-portraiture. Having seen many different examples of self-portraiture in school I think it will be interesting to see how the kids interpret that assignment. Check back to see the pictures!

Last week I started some volunteer work for an organization in Lexington called Our World In Pictures. The program is a photography mentor ship program that gives kids the opportunity to express themselves through photography. Our first meeting was last Thursday and we were paired up with our kids. I won’t  use names, instead I’ll call my two guys “D” and “T”.

I have to admit that I was a tad nervous going into this whole thing. I am not used to being around kids above the age of three anymore! I was filled with apprehensions like, “what are we going to talk about?” and whether or not I’d be “cool” enough. This is great experience for me though-in the fall I’ll be doing some volunteer work at UK hospital through a program called Kreative Katz, teaching art to sick kids. That in turn will help prepare me for after I get my teaching certification!

Our first lesson consisted of a scavenger hunt that was designed to get the kids looking at the community around them. They were asked to find the following; something yellow that is smaller than your hand, something orange, something shiny of the ground, crawly critters, clouds, leaves with three different shades of green, something moving on two wheels, a bird in flight, and a neighborhood dog.

Here a a few pics my guys took-

Tomorrow our second lesson is self-portraits so I am sure that there will be some interesting photos from that as well. For more information check out http://www.ourworldinpictures.org/ and the blog at www.ourworldinpictures.com/e7center