always busy, always pretty.

san francisco, san francisco.
always busy, always pretty.
i can see you just across the bay.

your red bridge over the sea,
keeps me safe and warm and free
on a clear day there's no place i'd rather be.

[excerpt from joey ryan's awesome song "california"]

i love san francisco. the people are warm and friendly, and there is a strange sense of small-ness and close-ness despite it's large and diverse population. there is always something new to see, to photograph, to eat, to experience. i quite like that and i find myself energised after visiting the city. and yet i always feel as though i left part of my heart there. san fransisco has it's way of doing that. rude. but alas, i know i shall return. someday.

post-grad wanderings.

yesterday i had a wonderful conversation over lunch with my friend robyn. not only was in great to catch up, but i quite enjoyed our discussion about post-graduate life and about my recent blog post about our someday culture. i love a good discussion. so alas, here are a few more musings for you on a similar topic...

us recent grads are in a funny place, especially those of us who hail from the likes of westmont college. many of us find ourselves freaking out about our current state in life and trying so desperately to be content in our wanderings. we want to be changing the world straight away and get our dream jobs "fresh out the oven." we secretly want to be successful and to be written about in various westmont publications. we feel this pressure to have all our ish together and to have our lives figured out.

this is silly of course. and unrealistic. we are young and need to ease up on ourselves and be content in our current state. i think we need to embrace that fact that we are in transition and don't have it all figured out. and shouldn't. trial and error is normal and natural. we can't expect our dream job to be right around the corner. we don't have to. we can risk. we can be adventurous. we can do things we've always wanted to do. even if it's just for a season, as least we're living and dreaming and learning along the way.

i sense that many of us have an overwhelming desire to be content and to enjoy the present. but we don't know how. we are too gripped by the tyranny of urgency, practicality and fear. and of course, like i said in my "someday" post, this doesn't mean we get all crazy and wild with our decisions. but i do think we need to begin to change our mindsets and allow ourselves to risk a little bit. if you wanna start your photography business, do it. if you want to move to mexico and teach english, teach. if you wanna travel through europe before you settle into a job, travel. if you wanna go to africa just to go to africa and see what it's all about, go. if you want to learn how to make leather shoes, learn.

i think there is great potential here to learn and be challenged, to grow and fine-tune ourselves, and to become more of who we're called to be. does anyone else resonate with this? i would love to have ourselves a cyber-discussion if y'all are willing. feel free to post some thoughts below...

plus.

this is a preview of an exciting coming attraction here a j. shipley photography. and trust me, it will be a big PLUS for all my couples. i am just sayin'.

someday.

i am a someday-er. someday i'll get a gym membership. someday i'll go to africa. someday i'll visit amber and chris in austrailia. someday i'll take a typography class. someday i'll get a master's degree. someday i'll start do more design work. someday. someday. someday.

and i know i'm not alone. we are a someday-generation. or perhaps a someday-culture. i hear and see it all over the place. someday i'll retire and travel the world. someday we will have kids. someday i'll find a job i actually like. i think this my be problematic on many levels. this mentality lends itself to complacency and an unhealthy perspective on the future. it puts us in a sort of survival mode and causes us to neglect the here and the now, the present. it prevents us from being content in our everydayness.

now, i do realise that we can't do everything we want to do straight away. we can't "get crazy" and start running off to foreign lands and buying houses and such. but i do think we can change our mind-sets to value, cherish and live in the present and to no longer look to tomorrow as though it will make all our dreams come true. what if we found peace in our present-ness and starting leaving as though our someday was today? i wonder how that would change our morale, our restlessness, our discontent.

of course, there is something comforting about being able to hope in the future. hope for relief, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for change and growth and forward movement. so yes, our someday mentality can be a source of peace and comfort when the going gets rough in the present. i think that if many of us didn't have such hope, the heres and the nows of today would be all too gloomy and terrifying to confront. so in some ways, we must look toward tomorrow and find joy in the reality that there will indeed be a better day...

what are some of your "somedays" that you would like to turn into "todays"? how can you be intentional and proactive in living in the present and being content in your everydayness?

an iris book.

yesterday, i received the album i designed for micah and claragrace. and i am so pumped about it. i photographed their wedding back in june up in san francisco and i still get all sorts of excited when i think about all that was their special day. i got the chance to photograph in some of the coolest parts of the city all because micah and claragrace wanted their wedding photos to be epic. they tailored their wedding day schedule to accommodate as many on-location shoots as possible. they wanted each shoot to be somewhere unique, meaningful and simply bad-ass. i was spoiled. they even had me drive them 30 minutes through traffic to a pier that was on the opposite side of the city just to get this one shot micah had envisioned for quite some time. it was totally worth it. and the result was one of the coolest series of wedding photos i have ever created. and now, they are forever preserved in a beautiful and delightfully modern iris book. how cool is that?!

check this thing out...

this is an 10x10 iris soul book with a linen cover in taupe and beautiful hand-made end papers.

the custom de-bossing with no foil is a subtle and modern touch.

i love the simplicity and feel of a coffe table book style album. it feels like you're flipping through an art book. the pages are crisp and clean. and there are 100 of them to boot which allows the inclusion of many more images than most albums.

i couldn't be happier with the result and i am so excited to now offer this book as an option in all of my wedding photography collections. so cool.

photographers, if you're on the prowl for something fresh and modern, check out IRISbook. they are onto something to be sure.