I had a great chat with one of my cousins today. He has always been very supportive of my photography, even back when I was using 'duct tape' camera. The second day of owning my fancy camera, he was more than willing to let me practice portrait photos of him. As an aspiring actor living in Hollywood, he has had a lot of interaction with camera time and knows what the photographers are looking for. So when he compliments my work, I really listen to what he is saying. And I learn from it as well.

Today we were talking technology. 'Mobile Me' for one and Macs. He knows his Mac computers. Basically, he knows everything about Apple inside and out. All of my family members go to him for consultations when and if we have questions. And every time, he adds cool little features and shortcuts to our devices. I always tell him that he should work for the company but he says that if he did that, he wouldn't find the joy in it anymore. He needs creativity. A way to express himself. I can totally relate.

So one of the reasons that I decided to journal about one of my fave cousins today is because he is a big supporter of me pursuing photography. Following my dreams. He told me that he likes the diversity of photos in my journal but that my real strength, is portraits. Capturing people. And I had to remind him that just over a year ago, I wasn't photographing people very much. Trying to take a serious portrait of another person was intimidating to me. And then I got an email from him one day telling me that he liked a portrait that I had blipped and that he thought that I should do more of that. His encouragement prompted me to start a portrait series. Which later turned into 'Portrait Interviews'. And I can thank a very good friend of mine as well for the 'interview' part of that equation.

I had already blipped this tulip today (when I was actually more inspired to do a portrait) but I knew I needed to use it. Because something else that we talked about was how photographing still life subjects can actually help hone your skills for portraits. Take this raindrop that is barely hanging on to the petal, I treated this raindrop with as much care and precision as I treat the eyes when I photograph faces. The focus has to be spot on or else the effect will be lost. And as tired as I might get of photographing 'another flower', it is actually very good practice. It keeps my manual focusing sharp. And I know I've said it time and time again, but if it wasn't for Blipfoto, I wouldn't be putting this much practice and thought into my photography. It wouldn't be a part of my daily routine. But blip forces me to practice. To want to practice. To become more creative. To continue seeing beautiful things to blip even when somedays I wake up and think, "I've blipped just about everything there is to blip now". Blip has helped me to see the world in a million and a half different ways.

Thanks for the chat today Cuz. We will get you in that group family photo this summer! This summer we are going to take the group down to the ocean and try to get some beautiful sunset photos with our Grandparents.

(Last year he was the only one missing from the big family photo so I photoshopped his head into the group pic, right between my husband and my Dad. It looked like he was lurking so the family nicknamed the photo, 'The Creeper'. Ha, it was so funny but he said he was actually pretty sick about not being in it with everyone.......just a little bit of behind the scenes for you blippers / readers.)