These days most of our artwork, photographs and words exist only as pixels on the screen, so there’s something special about being able to hold your production in your hand, smell the paper, and show it to others. While it’s satisfying, it also forces you to perfect your craft, as your mistakes as any errors are not easily editable by a few keystrokes. I found that out as there were a few things I would do differently with the colour elements of my book next time.

(The print version of Newslettering is actually still up for sale on the Blurb site, though unless you’re blowing your nose with $20 bills I’d recommend sticking with the free eBook).

The question, originally asked on the blog of Steven Pressfield, author of War of Art, while at first sounding arrogant or egotistical, penetrates to the heart of the journey of becoming fully ourselves. Pressfield put it well:

“The pursuit of What Would I Do leads to non-iconization, non-demonization, non-self-iconization. Its object is the finding of our own voice, the realization of our own selves.”

The problem with the question “What Would Jesus Do?” is that quite often the question is answered  by our religious ideals of what Jesus, the super-spiritual superhero Jesus would do, which of course is pray and read his Bible. (Insert your favorite superhero or person you iconize, the question will get a similar result).

The question of “What Would I Do” helps us relinquish the vain pursuit of becoming someone else, and embrace the endless creative possibilities waiting to be unleashed in the person called “you.”

One of the important things that the “WWiD” question provides is context. I’ve heard that once you quit asking “what would Jesus do?”, bring your passions and creativity to the table, and start asking Jesus more “how?” questions, then you start getting some interesting answers. And I wonder if Jesus rather not be our slave master or superhero who has to show up to save the day in his flowy cape, but would prefer the position of coach and mentor as we learn to take care of the world he’s given us.

I came home yesterday to Anna crouching on the floor with camera and a piece of cardboard in hand, taking photos of a bunch of mini-lights. Once I finally figured out what kind of effect she was playing with I got really excited. You can buy creative aperture kits (also called “bokeh”) that will help you achieve the “scattered star” kind of effect, but you can also make your own with some scissors and cardboard. The product of our little photo shoot were some fun photos of Olivia. We will definitely play around with this more, but we wanted to show you how you can make your own creative aperture!

Step 1: Cardboard, scissors and light.

Grab some small pieces of cardboard, and cut a shape out of the middle. We played with a single heart, double heart, star and squares. Start with smaller shapes and work your way up. We also tried cutting 3 hearts out in a row, but found that that made it look kinda muddled.

We set up some mini-lights which gave a good starry effect. Play also want to play around with daylight, city lights at night etc.

Step 2: Fire away.

Put your F-stop way down (aperture all the way open), hold the cardboard up in front of the lens and, as they say in hunting, shoot through the heart (or whatever shape you made:)! Play around with the exposure and focus. When your light source is out of focus you’ll create the desired starry effect. Cool huh???

Step 3: Adding a prop.

Putting Olivia into the picture made things a little more complicated (especially considering she wasn’t in the best in best of moods, but that’s another story…). I held her somewhere midway between the lights and the camera. With the shallow depth of field of our 50mm lens at f/1.8 we could easily get Olivia’s face in focus, keeping the lights blurry in the background. We did have to add some extra lighting to to light up her face a bit for these photos.

And that’s about it! No Photoshop required! Give it a try and let us know what you come up with. Or if you’ve already played around with this before, link us up!

Olivia turned 5 months old today, which called for another photo shoot. And Anna figured out how to make this cool hearty photo happen (with only lights and cardboard!)!

(This is our house from the front door. The living room is on the right, and you can see the dining area and kitchen in the photo. The stairway to the bedrooms is behind the gray wall. There, now you’ve had the tour! )

The really cool thing about having the help of having creative minds and eager hands help transforming our living space is that they’ve left us excited about the possibilities of how we can make these rooms our own. Now we gotta get some sweet artwork on the walls!

Meine en Irene, thanks for the help!

Recently as I was helping a friend of mine send out a newsletter, we discovered that:

1. Each of your email lists in Mail Chimp has its own unique email address (this address is found by clicking on the “Lists > View List > List Tools > Create Campaigns by Email”). Sending an email draft of your newsletter to that address will create a draft newsletter in your Mail Chimp account, ready to be sent off to the masses!

2. Using this email feature, you can create your newsletter in Word and email it to your list through Outlook, or on Macs you can use Mail Stationary to make a pretty newsletter and send it off through Mail Chimp. So your email will show up inline (as opposed to an attachment), you don’t have to worry about accidentally revealing your entire list to the world by sticking all the addresses in the “To:” field, and you can take advantage of Mail Chimp’s many stats for each of your emails.

Creating a great email newsletter has never been easier, and if everyone who sends out newsletters jumped over to Mail Chimp to do it, the world would be a happier place. If you haven’t yet, join today!

Having lived here for three months now, that’s our hope for our little family too.

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

A beautiful “illustrated monologue” and collaboration between two amazing artists, Rob Bell (speaker) and Chuck Anderson (graphics, storyboards, & art direction).

What I love about this piece is the energy of Bell. A super-talented public speaker, his excitement, pacing and passion drew me in. And though I found the graphics distracting the first time I watched it, on the second and third watch I love how they, coupled with the music, accentuate that energy.

“resurrection announces that God has not given up on the world
because this world matters
this world that we call home
dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water
this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing”

Check out the other work of Rob Bell and Chuck Anderson.

Lately I’ve been checking out some master-of-light-effects graphic artists and trying to learn from their style. Here’s something I put together last night, based on a photo we took of Winnipeg last week.

And it looks better in a larger format, which you can find here.

“A saint is the person who can will the one thing.” – Soren Kierkegaard

I have no idea what that quote means, except that I heard that quote (in the video whose trailer is below) used in reference to ordering and simplifying our busy lives.

For years I’ve been trying to learn the art of saying “No”. I’m really good at being busy, and saying “Yes” to doing lots of good things and taking advantage of lots of opportunities, then getting overwhelmed by all the things I’ve gotten myself into. We’re learning, especially in becoming parents, that there are a lot of things we need to say “No” to because of saying “Yes” to being parents.

What is it you’ve said “Yes” to? Because you can’t say “No” unless you’ve said “Yes” to something else. – Rob Bell