Guest Blogger: Jolyn from A Year Of Happy

I am so excited to have Jolyn from A Year of Happy at my house today. She has an amazing photo blog and a blog cafe that you must check out. We met through the 100 Photos Project and I have fallen in love with her pictures. So grab your cup of Monday tea and give a warm welcome to Jolyn.

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Hi! I'm JoLyn and I'm so excited to be visiting at Mamma Tortilla--what an honor it is to be here!

Leslie and I got in touch because we both love photography. Me? I'm really new to the photography game--in fact, I just got my "big-girl" camera for Christmas, and now it hardly ever leaves my side. I am hooked! And I think the internet/blogging world is the perfect place to learn photography, make friends, and share our photos.

For instance, Leslie and I are both participating in a 100 photos project. Every person who wants to play along chooses their own theme. Mine is "Simple Pleasures." This theme goes along with my Happiness Project, which is to look for the good things in life that money can't buy, and write about them on my blog. These two projects are really changing the way I look at life. They are making me notice things I had taken for granted--and the simple things have taken on much more meaning since I started focusing on life through the lens of my camera.

One experience in particular was an early morning when I was driving my son to school, like I do most mornings. I started looking at my world wondering what would make a good photo that day. And I saw this view--it's only about a mile from my home. I see it every single day. But I guess in my rush of activities, I don't really take the time to look. When I looked at it through my lens, I realized how breathtaking it really is!

I've also started taking note of simple things that I might not have seen otherwise. Like the day I was in the airport and saw these two birds sitting on the chairs watching the planes take off and land!

And speaking of birds, I've never paid much attention to them before. But having my camera in hand, I've become an avid bird watcher. On a recent humanitarian trip to Nicaragua, I spent an hour taking photos of the birds on the beach--and loving it!

Another fun project I'm participating in is called "Team Up Thursday". For this project, we are paired with another person, and each week we take a photo based on the week's theme. Then we create a diptych using our two photos. My partner is Arizaphale from Australia. I'm from Utah, so the two of us are having a blast getting to know each other and working together from opposite sides of the world. It's fun to see what our teammates come up with for each week's theme! Here's one of our diptychs--our theme was "Lunch".

As much fun as I'm having with my camera, I'm quickly learning how much I don't know. The method to my madness right now is to take hundreds of photos--and hope one or two get lucky and turn out good! You should have seen me in Nicaragua, madly snapping photo after photo from the window of our moving bus! Luckily, I got a few good ones that really tell the story of our amazing adventures.

I guess for me, photography is about two things: telling a story and finding the joy in life. And no matter how much I learn about how my camera works, that's how I hope it will always be!

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Thank you so much Jolyn for coming over today and visiting :) Don't forget to check out her photo blog and blog cafe.

Leslie