Things We Love

The things you love greatly influence how you see the world. We use the word “things” loosely. We don’t necessarily mean just material things, but the ideas, feelings, and experiences associated with them. Jeff and I talk about this in detail in our workshops, that finding inspiration is not about wasting time poring through countless other photographers’ work for something to copy, but about devouring other art forms that move you, actually experiencing life, and discovering yourself. Your point of view, and you as a person, are greatly influenced by what you love and surround yourself with. This is how you develop a way of seeing the world that’s truly your own.

And because everyone is different, our set of things will never exactly match anyone else’s set of things at any given point. On the off-chance that they do though, your decades’ worth of life experiences up to this point guarantees that you will experience these same things differently as we do. There is no ideal set of life experiences, you are free to love whatever you want, and you can be as weird and strange as you’d like to be. It’s how you use the combination of all that and funnel them into your work that matters and counts.

When you put what you love out there, what you love will find you. Kindred spirits will find you. You won’t have to be all similar, but having some common points of interest is always a good starting point. We can work with all sorts of people, but we do our best work with those who get what we’re like and appreciate the way we see the world. As do all artists, really. I’m always so grateful that we get to do that on a daily basis. We have the most wonderful clients.

This is the first collection of things we love, and we’ll try to make this a regular feature here on the blog. We do a lot of this on Facebook and on Instagram (mine and Jeff’s), too. Keeping them on the blog will be like collecting bits and pieces of the world that we love into one little basket.

August is off-peak for us, and we’re loving having some time to read. Here are some of what we’ve been poring through:

Jeff really dug the Hop Inn hostel in Hong Kong. It’s so conveniently located at Tsim Sha Tsui, and it’s clean, affordable, and totally chill.

We’re both loving that I’m blogging again. Hee. I have managed to share 4 weddings and 1 engagement shoot these past few weeks. I’m hoping to continue at a similar pace. There’s so much more to share.

I loved how Jeff asked me what I wanted from Hong Kong and I couldn’t think of anything, so I just said “get me something pretty”, and he came home with a camera. I may or may not have squealed when I opened it. This man knows me better than I know myself sometimes. I’ve had my old white 7s model for almost 5 years (and it hasn’t been white in a long time), so this made me ridiculously happy.

We’re falling in love with shooting with instant film all over again. (Thanks again for bringing this home, Benz!) I have never had this much stock of instant film in my entire life, and I was so ecstatic upon seeing this that I literally hugged myself. I learned on 35mm film and a borrowed camera, and I remember counting all my shots because I couldn’t always swing for more film. This much film will always look like heaven to me.

It made me a bit nostalgic, so I went through a lot of old photographs.

We loved these sad things. Technically, these are still books, but they deserve a separate mention. The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Volumes 1 and 2. We don’t have Volume 3 yet. I’m not sure I can handle it.

We’ve loved having more time to spend with our son this month, who is growing faster than his mommy’s heart can catch up.

And music, we’ve always loved music. Jeff used to make me mixtapes. And when we moved in together, we’d often be sprawled on the living room floor, singing along to great music and telling each other stories of our childhoods, as we do.

We’re loving our office and how it always smells like coffee and books. It’s small, but it’s filled to the brim with love. A groom once walked into our office and said it distinctly smells like a German bookstore. So now, it’s on our bucket list to visit Germany. In the meantime though, as it rains outside our office window, my view’s really not too shabby. :)