a cuppa...with meaning

I love Kim's challenges in her Beyond Layers class...only I am usually late completing the assignment. Today's post is almost two weeks late. By the time I receive it in my inbox, read it, mull it over in my mind, come up with a photo-op, shoot it (several takes...and I do mean several), load them into Lightroom, choose one, and edit it some more in Photoshop....well, you can see why it often takes me a couple weeks to get it up on my blog, where I then write about it.

All of this is done in a piece-meal fashion - a bit at a time, slotted in amongst the daily routine and events of Life.

So Kim's Cuppa Challenge involved a cup, a book, and an accessory. I more or less followed Kim's recipe, but it needed Something Else, so I experimented with several of her textures, finally settling on her kk_addsomenoise1 (Screen layer mode 77%) because it added some nice wrinkles...like this well-worn favorite book.

I first read this little gem a few years ago, and recently was inspired to pull it out again and glean something new from it. Dr. Frankl did not disappoint.

Oh, and BTW, one reason I shot so many takes is because I was desperately trying to fit the flame-in-darkness image on the book cover into my still life set-up, but it just didn't work.

Flame. LIGHT. My One Word for 2013. On my honor, it was just one of those serendipitous happenings you stumble upon occasionally in the creative process.

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The sweet old-fashioned teacup is a family heirloom that belonged to my late mother-in-law, Vernetta Swainson, whom I never met. I do know this: she lived for her family, delighting in being a wife and mother. I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect that she didn't have to search very hard to discover the meaning of her life.

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He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

Friedrich Nietzsche

as quoted by Viktor Frankl