I’m sure many parents are planning to attend holiday events this year and taking photographs of their children is almost always part of the festivities. Here are 5 tips for getting the best out of those holiday photos and most of them are the same for any other planned special moments where children will be involved.
1) Fill their bellies and get ’em their naps! Make sure your children are well fed and well rested before attempting to ask them pose and smile for a photograph. Low blood sugar and drowsiness is a perfect storm for tantrums, crying fits and uncooperative subjects. The same is actually true for adults. ;)
2) No need for the “smile for the camera!” chant. Don’t actually ask your child to smile. It’s not always necessary to pose your subject or even have them look at the camera to get a good photograph. Sometimes capturing your child in the moment, enthralled or excited about their surroundings is enough to make the moment and the memory magical.
3) Don’t use flash . Not only can a flash be distracting but it can also create unnatural images or allow only portions of the scene to be illuminated. If you’re not a professional photographer and can’t figure out how to take a good photo without the flash in a low lit scene, look for an auto setting on your camera that can help such as the the aperture setting which will allow you to set your aperture wide open, letting more light into the camera. If you can adjust ISO on your camera then definitely boost that up as well. Some smart phone cameras allow you to turn the flash off and will automatically compensate for the lower light.
4) Get low. Get down to the same level as your child so you can see what they’re seeing. This tip is true anytime you are photographing children but can especially be helpful at the holidays when the delight in a child’s eyes are what the moment is about.
5) You got to move it! Try different angles/distances. Yes, it can be important to get down on your child’s level but you don’t have to stay there. Sometimes changing your perspective can help give an entirely different feel to an image, whether by conveying a feeling of smallness or magnitude or simply bringing you closer to the action or the moment.
Most importantly and more important than anything is remember to have fun and not become so focused on visually documenting the moment that you forget to live in the moment. Remember to set aside perfection and planning and embrace the spontaneous for the sake of securing memories.
Faithfully Thinking: A little more of a little less: why the fear of missing out is killing us
Our brain was not wired to process the amount of information we throw at it on a daily basis.
The shows we watch.
The news we tune into.
The podcasts we listen to.
The social media we scroll through.
The trends and news and health warnings and even the good stuff that is aimed at growing us spiritually.
It is information over load.
Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church said it well in his sermon “why are we anxious?”
“There is no way that we can’t take it all in and still have room for the peace of God,” he said. “You’re praying for the peace of God – God doesn’t have anywhere to put it. Your mind is too full. You were not designed to have the entirety of the conversation of the whole human race buzzing on your back pocket on your butt bone. Just walking around like snipers. ‘What did they say?’ ‘Where did they go on vacation?’ ‘What about that press conference?’ It was not supposed to be this way. Of course we’re freaking out. Of course we’re zombies. Of course we’re numbing ourselves and drinking and smoking and popping. Of course we can’t stop it. The devil’s got a shock collar on our back pocket and we don’t even know it.”
We are constantly shackled to the world through our devices. Our minds are constantly filled with digital noise.
We are listening to a new song or reading a new post or receiving notifications about who is presenting something “live” on one of our social media outlets. And while they are live we are dead inside because we can’t even hear ourselves think.
We have a constant buzz of knowledge and information in our heads. So much we can’t hear our voice, our spouse’s voice, children’s voices or more importantly God’s.
How can God speak to us if we never shut the voices off?
Notice I say “we” and “us.”
How can God speak to ME if I never put the phone down and stop searching for help and validation in social media instead of His Word?
Ouch. That one hurt.
Because it’s true.
Because it’s what I heard in my spirit today when I tried to quiet the voices and just listen. I tried to listen to what God was saying and it was hard.
It was hard to hear His voice beyond the anxiety and the doubts and the worry and the efforts to fix it all in the twenty minutes between when I woke up and my toddler woke up. Not too mention I tried to force myself to listen and we all know what happens when you do that: you start making grocery lists in your head and wondering how cellophane works.
But then I did have a thought, that felt a lot like a reminder to my soul; a reminder that we can’t place ourself in chaos and expect to feel peace.
There are times chaos whirls around us, out of our control. Often, though, we are in control of what sweeps us up into its current. We can step back, close computers, uninstall apps, shut off devices and quiet all the voices except His.
We can decide that less is what we need.
Less people telling us how to be a better us.
Less “motivational” posts that make us feel we’re getting this Christianity thing all wrong.
Less busyness.
Less voices whispering we need to do more.
Less of us telling ourselves we need to be everything to everyone
Less expectations.
Less running toward what we think will make us happy.
Less determination that if we just have more of what we don’t have we’ll have all we need to be happy.
Is social media all evil and no good?
Of course not.
There is good mixed in the bad but less of it can mean more of what matters to us.
More of him.
More of her.
More of them.
More laughter with them.
More of your voice, not “theirs”.
More of hearing your soul.
More peace.
More Him.
Subscribe
Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates.
We respect your privacy.
Featured
Read More →
Faithfully Thinking: More thoughts on the doubts even Christians have
Last week I wrote about feeling fake as a Christian when I find myself doubting my faith because of the suffering some people face.
I never know if anyone will read my posts when I write them but I write anyhow, I guess as a form of catharsis for myself and also in case someone else feels they are alone in the same thoughts.
I don’t often receive a response to my more melancholy posts, which is okay because I assume my friends are simply praying for me and aren’t sure how to respond. When a friend or reader does respond it is usually to thank me because they have felt the same way but never knew how to say it or even if they should.
The private message I received from a friend in response to that post was heartfelt, deep and thought provoking.
With his permission I am sharing part of that response here today.
“I read your blog post about sometimes we are fake. I wanted to share some thoughts on it and thank you for authenticity.
Suffering and struggle and doubt do not make us less Christian. St. Thomas doubted the ultimate hope until he was knuckle deep in the wounds of Christ. The Apostles huddled in doubt and fear and would not believe the first message of the Resurrection. Face to face with Christ in life and in glorified resurrection….they denied and doubted.
We are weak. That is not an indictment of humanity, but one of the gifts. If we were not weak, we would not need each other. We would not know we need Christ. In Scripture and the history of Saints many of those who are loved and called by Him scream at Him in rage, doubt…run….weep.
When I was ten my mother was dying. No one would say it out loud. But there I was, a little kid good at theology, pious to a fault. Everyone said I would be a priest. I thought I would. But I asked Mom, because I could not understand…”Why are you going to die? Why are you sick?”
And she said that when God forms us it is art and sometimes it is like a painting…painless. Sometimes it is like pottery. Sometimes there is fire and there is pain. But the potter alone knows the form of the clay and what will make it the best it can be. And pottery, even with the suffering because of the suffering, is stronger than a painting.
She said if someone else had her cancer maybe they would lose faith in Him. And if that was so, she was glad to have it.
Glad to have it.
I remember even then thinking, ‘I will never be her. I will never be that much of a Christian.’
I did not understand it all.
And I asked her why God would fire her like pottery into death. And she said, “Love, my life was a painting. I’m not the one He’s forming right now.”
Through the pains and poverty of my life, that continue in many ways, I have held on to the fact that the most Christian woman I knew faced slow painful death, fading from her children, without blinking, without hate or accusations at God. And she held herself weaker than others. She, to herself, was a painting. Wonderfully made and beautiful but less hard, tested and worked than pottery. She was telling me, it will be ok to doubt, grieve, scream at the heavens. It will not make you less a Christian. It will make you a stronger member of His army.
When my brother died at age 35, his two daughters were just younger than my sister and I were when Mom died. My sister had been so angry at God for years after mom died. So angry before dealing with it all. And our youngest niece (not knowing how her aunt had been) asked if it was ok to be mad at God. And my sister knelt to get eye to eye with her and said, “God’s big enough to handle it. He wants you to give it to Him. And if you do that by being angry with Him, doubting Him…it’s ok. He loves you.”
As Christians we walk a balance between the weakness of our humanity and the strength of being made in the Image of God.
Tolkien puts it best in this work “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” in the history of Middle Earth books.
It is a debate between the human wise woman Andreth and the Elven lord Finrod on the nature of things.
Andreth: They say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end. This they say also, or they feign, is a rumour that has come down through years uncounted, even from the days of our undoing.
And earlier Finrod gives a perfect description of Christian Hope:
‘Have ye then no hope?’ said Finrod.
‘What is hope?’ she said. ‘An expectation of good, which though uncertain has some foundation in what is known? Then we have none.’
‘That is one thing that Men call “hope”,’ said Finrod. ’Amdir we call it, “looking up”. But there is another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is “trust”. It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children’s joy. Amdir you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?’
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth X: Morgoth’s Ring, “Athrabeth Finrod Ah Andreth”
So our hope..is in the Resurrection we have Estel. But it is not less Christian to have failings in Amdir.
We all doubt. We all wonder why at times. We all scream it inside at time until our heart breaks. Thank you for mentioning it out loud because I do believe God wants us to – because that shows us we are not alone, we need each other in this world.
He could take all suffering in this world away. He could make reward and prosperity and joy here a point by point reward for goodness. He does not. There are many reasons Theology lists for why that is. But those reasons are flat and tasteless to a suffering heart. And that suffering heart is united to the Cross. So that alone means it can never make us less Christian. Even though we often worry about that.”
Featured
Faithfully thinking: weeding out the bad so the good can survive
My son was recovering from an illness on the couch and watching a cartoon on his laptop, my daughter was watching a cartoon on my phone and I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook when it all shut off out of the blue.
For ten seconds we sat there and looked at each other bewildered. What were we supposed to do now? With all our devices dark, except the phone which continued to work off data, we were completely lost.
Suddenly I felt excited. I felt a sense of freedom and dashed outside to my garden, over run with weeds thanks to weeks of neglect, and began yanking weeds out by the handful. I felt like a giddy child let loose in a candy store. The smell of dirt and grass andnature was setting my soul on fire.
In the midst of the euphoria I was also disgusted that it had taken the electricity going out to wake me up and break the chains of apathy and digital busyness that I had let hold me down.
Logged on to Facebook I seem to think I have to read one more post, see one more photo, laugh at one more pointless video and then before I know it it’s the afternoon and I’ve accomplished nothing. I haven’t finished the dishes, cut up and put the extra zucchini in the freezer, cleaned up my room, made the beds or weeded the garden.
And I certainly haven’t nourished my soul or connected with God.
Instead I’ve only fueled anxiety that I often call “my anxiety” claiming the state as my own, as if it’s an expected mindset for me to be in.
I’ve found that scrolling past story after story, some positive but many aimed at igniting our fear – fear of cancer, of death, of loss – is damaging my emotional health and in turn my physical health.
Many say “I just ignore those negative or fear based posts” but to me it seems the continuous exposure to these types of stories often permeates our thoughts and perpetuate our fears without us even realizing it. The negative affects of today’s social media are subtle and unassuming.
I’m not saying social media doesn’t have its good points or that it can’t be used to help encourage, connect, and support. Along with the good, however, comes even more counteractive and isolating aspects.
We have never been more connected than we are today, Facebook founder mark Zuckerburg likes to tell us again and again. In some ways this is true but in reality we’ve never been more disconnected or separated.
Satan is never happier than when we are isolated, made to feel alone, and spending our days on Facebook, pretending we are actually connecting with people. When we are on our computer or staring at our phone we are not living in the present or focused on those around us. Our minds are on a digital and virtual plane, trapped in a world of fantasy, antagonistic words, pessimistic views and sometimes fake optimistic ones.
I thought about this all as I yanked the weeds out of the garden so I could plant spinach seeds, seeds of a plant to bring our family nourishment.
I found it pretty pathetic that it took the electricity going out to motivate me to weed out the bad and plant the good. Yet it often takes a power failure in our life to wake us up to the good we have been missing out on.
Philippians 4:8 says: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
Sometimes I need to pull the plug on the busyness of life so I can focus on the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely and the admirable.
If I don’t cut off the power sometimes, or let God flip the switch for me, then the negativity, fear, pessimism and anxious thoughts will grow in my life like the weeds in my garden. The weeds are choking out my healthy plants, stopping them from growing. I’m nowhere near a master gardener and I know I have a lot to learn if I want a bountiful harvest in the future.
There are days I feel the weeds of life all around me, trying to steal my joy, my hope, my fervor for life. I put my hands up to push them back, but without the help of the one who is our Master Gardener, I’ll never find victory.
I need Him to help me keep the weeds in check and to remind me they need to be pulled so I can breathe and grow.
Money saving tips: Don’t be afraid to buy cheaper cuts of meat, your veggies whole
Panic set in when money got tight this last year but after a lot of prayer I’ve been learning more about how to save money and reduce expenses. This learning is a long process that is coming in stages.
Currently my money saving focus is on groceries and household items.
Groceries is one of the biggest expenses for our family, and probably most families, so that’s where I first started looking for ways to save. While groceries are expensive overall anymore, the highest costs are in the meat department. In the past I didn’t pay much attention to the cost of meat per pound but when Ihad to fit my purchases within a certain budget I knew I would need to start focusing on it.
Of course the better quality meats cost more, which was frustrating to me until I started to watch a couple of cooking shows and learned that meats that are thought of as “lower quality” can be used to create a variety of delicious meals.
There are many sites and cook books available to help you use not only cheaper cuts of meat to make amazing meals, but also supporting ingredients and dishes.
Stretching these cuts of meat by cutting them up and freezing them for later can also reduce the grocery budget.
I try to cook mainly Paleo meals for my family since gluten, dairy and sugar cause different health issues for each of us. If a recipe isn’t Paleo, I do my best to adapt it to fit our food lifestyle (I am not a fan of calling Paleo a diet, because I don’t eat that way to lose weight, but simply to feel better).
Because the rest of my family is not full Paleo, not every meal I cook adheres to the Paleo guidelines. I do add wheat and dairy to some meals, but avoid it for myself.
If you’re wondering what Paleo even means, Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo has a great explanation on her blog.
Michelle’s blog is a new source for me for meal planning after she turned me on to cooking with an Instapot via her Facebook live videos. I purchased the Instapot this past week (no, I am not getting any kind of payment from them) and am excited to see how it not only saves on time, but money, in relation to preparing meals for our family.
You can find her instapot recipes HERE.
About a year ago I read some invaluable information on a blog about cutting food expenses. One of the suggestions was to buy meats with the bone still in and skin still on and cut the meat up yourself to avoid the butcher passing the cost of cutting up the meat on to you. It’s the same for vegetables and fruits which are priced higher if you purchase them already cleaned and cut for you. While convenient, buying your meats, vegetables and fruit prepackaged can increase your grocery budget. It’s also not always the healthiest option as sometimes extra sugar or preservatives are added to keep the products “more fresh” for a longer period of time.
Ree Drummond, otherwise known as The Pioneer Woman, recently opened my eyes to cost saving ways to use various cuts of beef, the highest priced meat on the market. In the past I cooked an entire roast in a crockpot and sometimes used the leftovers for vegetable beef stew. Based on Ree’s ideas I’ve started buying a roast and then cutting it into either cubes for stew, slices for breakfast steak (haven’t tried this yet) or strips for stir fry. For chicken I have been buying split chicken breasts with the bone and skin still on, deboning it and then either keeping the breast whole or slicing it into tenders or chunks. I can use the chunks for chicken spiedies (if you’re not from the Northeastern part of the United States you can find a definition of those HERE), to add to salads, to make chicken nuggets or to add to a one-pan bake.
I plan to buy whole chickens in the future and cut them up into the cuts I want to use later. Tips on how to cut up and entire chicken or roast or debone chicken and fish, can be found on many sites online, including video tutorials like this one by Gordon Ramsey on YouTube (no swear words in this series, but beware of his salty language in other YouTube clips, of course.). Tips on how to cook a variety of recipes and food can also be found on YouTube.
A few YouTube video tips I’ve enjoyed include:
How to make the perfect rice by Gordon Ramsey;
How to make the perfect omelet by Jamie Oliver (apparently I like the British chefs).
How to make crackling chicken by Nom Nom Paleo.
Adding vegetables or beans, rice or fruitcan help stretch your meat and budget even more. When it comes to vegetables and fruit savings, a great idea is either growing your own and freezing them for later or stocking up on your favorites when they are on sale and freezing them for later. Buying items you use a lot of when they are on sale is one way my parents, who are on a fixed income, save money. This tactic can be used for groceries, household items, clothing, and just about any other needed product (versus wanted ones.)
Another great idea by Ree to stretch the budget, and make sure you get your veggies, is to make one pan meals with ingredients all piled into a roasting pan. You can find her one pan recipes on her site here.
I will make a quick disclaimer about Ree’s recipes – they are not Paleo in the least and often not super healthy. If you have watched her show or bought her cookbook you know she uses tons of flour, grains, dairy and sugar. Despite the fact I try not to use any, or at least less, of these ingredients I enjoy watching her Food Network show and reading her blog (which I followed before she became famous) . She offers some money and time saving tips, I enjoy her posts about her family, she seems very authentic in how she presents herself and I can often “hack”
her recipes to fit my family’s eating style.
I’ve given you a few ideas I’ve been using to reduce our grocery budget, now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear some of your tips in the comments or on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lisahoweler and with your permission I’ll use them in a future blog post about ways to save money.
Featured
The garden is indeed a disaster
You might remember my prediction that our first attempt at a garden may be a disaster.
That prediction has proven to be fairly accurate as shown by the weeds attempting to choke out the few plants that did survive the initial stages of planting a month and a half ago.
First, I missed the memo about planting everything in neat little rows. There definitely isn’t anything neat about our garden and not really any rows at this point.
I didn’t read packages right and failed to space the seeds far enough apart, as well. Then there was the week long rain that started the day after I planted. I’m convinced it washed away a good portion of my carrot seeds.
I am a total garden newbie so when I started yanking out weeds and didn’t see carrot tops sprouting where I thought they should have been I ended up ripping out a few carrot seedlings. I thought they grew a lot faster than they actually do. Whoops.
One side of the garden never even got planted and the weeds know it and have taken residence there, creating what is going to be a town violation at some point if I don’t get in there and yank out more of those pesky, pointless plants. It seems as soon as I weed one part I return the next day to find 1,000 more. Who knew weeds could grow so fast.
This week we harvested two little summer squash and you would have thought I’d won the lottery. Little Miss and I ran in the house and proudly displayed the little veggie to the boys, who were appropriately impressed but not as over the moon as we were.
There is currently something growing where I thought I planted cucumber. I thought it was zucchini but now it’s rounding out like watermelon and I truly do not remember buying watermelon seeds at any point, let alone planting them. A quick message to my dad and he said it’s a pumpkin growing, which is very upsetting to me because we now have four official pumpkin plants and two more trying to grow by my house. I had no idea simply dropping pumpkin seeds could lead to plants sprouting up all over the place.
I guess I’d better start searching the internet for pumpkin recipes now. And now to freeze pumpkins, carve pumpkins and convince others to take pumpkins away from us.
So at this point, I’m fairly certain we’ll have at least some summer squash, no cucumber, maybe some butternut squash (need to Google and find out when that usually starts to make an appearance) and I’ve learned that I can plant spinach and kale later in the season so I’ll be trying that too.
How about you? Do you garden? Does your garden thrive or barely survive?
Because sometimes it’s okay to not be happy your kids are growing up so fast
You know what’s really annoying?
Having to say what a blessing it is to watch our children grow up.
I see it all the time in the photography world. A mom-tog (not a bad term in my mind though it is to some) posts a photo of her oldest on instagram and writes a beautiful piece of prose about how much they miss when this growing child was young and innocent and liked to cuddle. Inevitably some other mom writes “but it’s such a blessing to see them grow, isn’t it?”
I have this suspicion that the other mom writes this because she herself knows the dark, ugly truth of parenting: yes, watching them grow is a blessing but yes, it also sucks raw, rotten eggs.
You know what?
I’m tired of us moms thinking we are horrible human beings if we admit there are days we can’t stand that our children are growing older and aren’t as sweet and cuddly as they once were.
We need to embrace our feelings even if it doesn’t fit our Pinterest list of perfect motherisms (yes, I know it isn’t a word, but you can pretend it is).
Does it mean we love our children less as they grow out of our arms and into independence? Of course not, but we need to stop feeling less than because sometimes we cry when we see how much they’ve changed over the years.
We all know what’s behind our tears.
Nostalgia.
Joy.
Sweet memories.
Selfishness.
Yes, selfishness.
We don’t want them to grow up and move on. Why? Because moms, deep down, feel very strongly that once their children grow up and move out they will no longer need them and worse yet? That we moms will no longer have worth, purpose, a reason to live.
Don’t get me wrong – our lives don’t completely revolve around our children’s to the point they are our only identity but then again – maybe it does for some of us.
And when we have to think about what our lives will be when they grow up and move on?
It’s hard.
It’s gut wrenching.
It’s scary.
It’s time for introspection we don’t want to face.
Yes, it’s necessary to accept our children are growing, not live in the past.
But it’s also hard and it’s ok to say that.
It is not only ok but it is healthy to honor how we feel in the moment let those emotions roll around and over and through us so we can deal with them in the open and not deep down in the dark caverns of our suppressed sensibilities
Too often we let the opinions of others, those who tell us how we should feel, should act and react, rule us and guide us and drag us through life.
We’re not bad mothers if we cry in the darkness of the night, aching for the younger days. We’re not even bad mothers if we live there for a little while – but only for a little while.
It’s not wrong to weep about the days gone by but if we do it for too long we’ll miss out on the now.
We will miss out on who our children are now and who they are becoming.
There is no rule that says a mom, or a father, can’t say they are dreading their children growing older while also enjoying watching them grow.
The alternative to not seeing them grow up? It’s unthinkable and is a million times worse than watching them go from cuddly toddler to stand offish teen.
But, yes, mama, you are allowed to say “I miss my baby.”
“I miss my little boy.”
“I miss my little girl.”
“This is hard. “
There are a lot of other moms and dads who are right where you are, even if they don’t say it.
They have those hard moments.
You have those hard moments.
But, yes, they, you and I know it is a blessing and a gift to watch them grow, develop, and bloom even as we lament how fast it’s all going.
The flowers are sad
I love how my 2-year olds’ brain works.
Sunday at my parents, we were walking to the house from the pool and she saw the flowers along the wall and said “oh those flowers are sad.”
They were purple flowers drooping down, closing up as the sun set.
I said “oh do they look sad? They’re really just closing up for the night.”
She looked at some green flowers that aren’t blooming fully yet and said “those flowers are angry.”
And she was right. They did look angry with their spiked petals and centers, dark green towering above the rock wall. With the shadows cast from the trees the petals almost looked like teeth ready to bite down on us.
It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about – flowers looking happy or sad or angry.
When you look through the eyes of a child you see so much more than you did before.
And children see, feel and understand much more than we realize.
Blueberry Picking and practicing storytelling through the lens
I read Elizabeth Willson’s post about storytelling through your lens after we visited the local blueberry farm, but was a bit proud of myself for actually following most of her tips already. Since reading the post, though, I’m looking forward to trying this again and capturing each of the different images she suggested.
I’ll be honest, we chose to visit the blueberry farm for something other than photos – we were hungry for blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins. Still, it did provide a nice opportunity to capture my family interacting and their personalities.
Like Elizabeth suggested, I did try some wider angles to capture more of the bigger picture and surroundings. I also focused in on details like little hands carrying buckets full of blueberries, and little fingers picking berries. And of course I also focused on my son sneaking blueberries when he was supposed to be picking, though I couldn’t say much, because I was doing the same thing.
I also made sure to capture my children interacting and luckily I didn’t have to take Liz’s suggestion to photograph the bad moments as well, since the visit went fairly well until Little Miss decided she needed a nap. Even then we were able to get her to the car and home for a nap before a major meltdown happened.
As for “getting in the frame” I didn’t use my own camera, but did finally ask my husband to grab one of the kids and I together with his cellphone so they would see that “I was there too.”
And like many I wasn’t thrilled with a photo of myself, but when my children are older and look at the photos, they won’t see what I see. They’ll simply see their mama. Or at least I hope.
For our next trip I’ll try more of Liz’s suggestions of trying different perspective and switching up with lenses, even though right now I’m only carrying around two.