My days. My nights. My life. Lived well.

I went to this amazing workshop this past weekend in Phoenix. It was with Cheryl Muhr and Amy Smith. The focus was building a portrait business. I got so many good pictures! If you like this, I am proud to announce that I am officially in business and available for hire! I’ll be updating this site with more information in the next few days! I am just so pumped! I have been tweakin’ all stinkin’ day!

I got to meet so many freakin’ cool photographers! Special shout-outs to my table-mates who were so inspiring to be around! Leah, Ellen, Gustavo, Lori, Sarah, Lindsay- such talented people!

While I work on some paperwork, here are my pics from the workshop!

I know there were no posts last week, but I was so stinkin’ busy with school! I am sitting in class right now, and we just finished our presentation. It went alright- probably could have done better, but it’s over now, and for that I am happy. I did post a cheesy video of the kitties over on Blip.tv last week, but I’ll include it at the end of this post since you probably didn’t see it. I promise there will be a proper post tonight or tomorrow. I have seriously been swamped and I am just overjoyed that my semester is now done! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEE!

As we drove back from Chicago this week, I was disheartened. I don’t know if it’s because it’s winter and the lack of foliage allows things to blow across the plains with less resistance or what, but it seemed like there were plastic bags everywhere. Rob says this is my new crusade. I don’t know if it’s that, but I am determined to at least minimize my own impact and encourage my friends to do the same.

I’m not sure if the problem is really as bad as I perceive it to be or if it is just that I am more aware of it as I strive to not take any bags whenever possible.

The problems I noticed with the plastic bags are many.

1. They are abundant.  There are so many!  People give you a bag if you buy a bag of chips at the gas station.
2. They are lightweight; they have the potential to fly everywhere and get caught on stuff.
3. They are not recycled as often as paper bags.
4. They are a danger to wildlife.
5. They are a suffocation hazard to children.

Even though it takes more energy and resources to produce a paper bag, it is more likely to be recycled and they last longer and can be reused.  They are not as likely to get caught in trees or entangle wildlife.

I’m a big fan of paper when I need to take a bag.  I’m also a big fan of the Aldi approach of charging for bags or making people bring their own.  In the UK, after a charge was imposed on taking plastic bags at IKEA, it reduced plastic bag usage there by 95%.

Most importantly, buy durable ones that you can reuse or sew some out of old T-shirts.  I really don’t want to see it get any worse than this.

So, I am trying to figure out what to do with pictures on my blog. I can’t decide if I want a slideshow like in this post or if I should just do it where you could click and they would darken the page and pop them up without going to Flickr.

I ask anyone reading this to please give me your opinion. I can’t do both because the plugins conflict. So, do you like the slideshow like in this post better or do you like the Lightbox feature which can be seen here? Let me know in the comments!