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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I collect my visual inspiration from across the web. I’ve been looking for a one-stop shop where I can save images, music, art and videos that peak my interest. Pinterest is looking like ‘the one’. I’ve been using Pinterest for a while now, but have decided to forgo all other tools and use it exclusively as my visual pinboard. For non-visual content, I still use Instapaper until I decide if I want to keep it or not. 

I’ve also just started using Trello to manage my creative projects. A great project management tool for visual folks like myself.  I’ll take something that I’ve pinned on Pinterest and move it to Trello when I’m ready to take the inspiration a bit further and start an actual project around it.

Each entry on Trello is a ‘card’ which when you click, takes you to the back where you can enter more info, add images, videos, checklists etc …

Super easy to use, and key for me is that it has an iPhone app and the website works on the iPad too.

People don’t really listen to gut instinct anymore. We tune it out, wanting concrete proof before we make a move. The thing that I came to realise is that intuition is actually on your side. It’s routing for you. It secretly whispers the answers that you are trying so hard to find. Why wouldn’t you listen to it. We listen to others like our lives depend on it, yet we pay no attention to the inbuilt life assistant we were all born with. There are those who hear their intuition loud and clear, but doubt it. We ask “Supposing it’s wrong?” when our first thought should be “Supposing it’s right?”

Life is littered with missed chances and opportunities, undiscovered sources of joy, and ‘fear’ is often at the route of it all. Fear of failing, fear of trying, even fear of succeeding are common reasons we ‘wait’. Waiting for circumstances to be just right, waiting for better conditions, waiting to feel better, braver, more equipped, waiting for support or just waiting for the need to pass so we don’t have to do anything at all.

You should be the most ‘important’ voice in your life. If it’s your boss or your teacher or similar, then you’re ‘doing it wrong’.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. ~ Steve Jobs

It haunts me.

I’ve spent the day angry and on the verge of tears. I miss him.

When I was 8, learning to swim, my dad threw me in the deep end of the pool and watched me thrash about as I tried not to drown.
Some may think that it is a terrible thing to do to a child, but my dad always believed that out of all his kids, I was the one who could do anything if I put my mind to it – even swim when I didn’t know how.

He’s the only one who ever had that kind of faith in me.

In my efforts to become more creative in my photography, I’m dipping into my archive of ‘abandoned images’ and reprocessing them in the hopes of reinventing them as art.
It’s actually a really enjoyable process looking through images I had given up on long ago and breathing new life into them.
This was originally a photo taken of a mask in the British Museum. It was under a hard florescent light, and was taken as a wide shot resulting in a lot going on in the background.
I took the picture and then rather embarrassingly realized I was in the gift shop, not in the museum itself … ha ha.

Plaster replica aside, I’m please with the result.

I was going to delete the original image as it was badly shot against the light, but had a sudden flash of inspiration. I cropped it, added some filters and artificial lights for effect.
All done on the iPad.