Thursday, December 30, 2010

best of 2010

One of my lovely friends (fellow photographer/blogger Brittany Mahood) encouraged me to post a "best of 2010". I thought it was a great idea and started scanning through the thousands of photos I have from this past year. So as most of you know this past year 2010, was a big one for me. In early January I had the amazing privilege of travelling to Costa Rica (with YWAM)... it was an absolutely insane (in a good way) experience.
bonfire, bonding time with the new family in CR

baptism at Manuel Antonio

I was in school and living in community with people I had never met. But they were all amazing, I have never felt so accepted in my life. I learned so much, and made great friends.
after a school program in Nicaragua

From there I was able to go on outreach throughout Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Haiti.
across from the Guanacaste YWAM base

Haiti was both a dream come true and a nightmare. It was hectic and blazingly hot. I went with a team of 9 other people to work with those who had been affected by the terrible earthquake (which happened in January 2010). It was life changing! The children were so precious but the atmosphere in the nation was just so different. There is a lot of poverty and fear. I feel like our mission of bringing hope was successful, and though it was challenging, it was so so worth it (these next few were my May in Haiti).




June marked my return to Canada :) how I missed so much about this beautiful country.
Tulabi Falls -- one of my favourite places on earth

I was, needless to say, happy to be back with my family here. For me that includes a lot of people outside my parents and siblings. Mostly from my amazingly supportive church. These beautiful ladies are part of a very special family that shares their love with me and so many others. This was taken right after the beach baptism in September. So carefree. I just love their free spirits.
This candid shot of my mom laughing at my brother with a kayak on his head at our family cabin in October just makes me smile. It had been years since we had all spent thanksgiving together at the lake and I was so thankful that we made it all work this year with all of our crazy schedules pulling us in so many different directions.

fall light after a second thanksgiving dinner with the Cormie family

A very oddly mild November led to this moment captured. A friend at work who always encourages my creativity was interested in some new family shots of her bunch. I really feel like family pictures are one of those very important things that we often put off in our very busy lives. And was more than happy to take these pictures for her. This one I snuck (no warning, un-posed) just wanted to capture the genuine love in this family.

My final "best" was taken a few days ago, while I was finishing off a roll of film on campus. I have taken many pictures of this spot and I always come back to it. I guess I find this graffiti on an old green house to be a little charming. The importance and power of love is underestimated daily I think. But I think its the most important.

Photography has always been such an important way of processing how I see the world. It has been a truly amazing year, full of new experiences and challenges. Hopefully I will be writing again in one year from now with more photos, and stories.

wishing you lots of love and blessings in 2011,
-Julie

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

back at it...

So I'm back at it. Christmas is over, and it was great! Crazyness at work, busy with family stuff and running around... but I'm settling back into some kind of a routine. Its nice to have time right now before classes start up again on the 5th
I have been working on some photography stuff, re-visiting an idea that I was working with in the winter of 2009. I'm excited to see how it turns out, the photographs on their own don't really look like anything special. But once they are put together they become this new image made up all of these little pieces.
one of the little pieces

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

today i found this in my hundreds of haiti photos...
"The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
--exodus 14:14

So simple but one of the hardest things for me... "being still" is not natural for me. Everything in me wants to be tough and fight my own fights and all of that. But thats not the way it works. It was great to stumble upon this today, just a nice reminder that I can "be still" and its okay. No guilt, just be still and keep quiet, pick your battles and save it for when you really should take a stand.