TGIF

So we are already 13 days into the New Year and new ideas are popping up every day. It is also now time for me to update the 'about me' section here on my blog because as of January 1, 2012 it was officially 11 years ago that I moved to Florence and in with Luigi. I still can't believe it myself sometimes. 11 years of growing and learning and changing and finding out who I am and what I want to do.  Its been an amazing adventure.

Taken just outside the door of my parents house in L.A

Of course for a Southern California girl these cold dark winters can sometimes effect my mood and my creativity but I know that it is only temporary and that there is so much inspiration around me I can hardly stand it! I do feel big changes coming on this year however and I am trying to be as positive as I can and remind myself, as John Lennon said, 'There is nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be'  and I believe this to be true both physically and creatively. And while it is a bit chilly around here and I am spending much more time indoors I am looking at this down time as an opportunity to re-focus and work on the things that tend to get neglected otherwise.

One of those things was going through all of the photos that I have saved on my computer and on not one, but two, external hard drives. Ever since my husband bought me my beautiful Cannon digital rebel a few years ago, I take photos of everything and anything I see that strikes me. I don't necessarily think of myself as a photographer, but I do think that taking photos helps me to be creative. It's almost like drawing for me. I like to create the composition and subject matter through the lens and I am fascinated with people. All kinds of people. And I try to capture scenes of everyday life and hold on to that moment through the image. So after looking at literally hundreds of photos and trying to decide which ones to keep and which ones were not so good, I  started to think about what I was possibly going to do with them all. And I got to thinking. Well,  lots of people sell their photos on Etsy so why not give it a try? Like I said I don't necessarily consider myself to be a photographer but rather an artist who uses photography has a medium. I am going to try and add at least two new photos per day and build up the collection from there.  I've decided to give it the name When in Florence as well. If you click on any of the images below it will take you into the shop! I figure I can try it out for a while and see what happens. One never knows!