Marissa's Guide to Indie Kid Photography

If you're an indie kid, or an aspiring indie kid, you know how important photography is to your image. You can spend all the time in the world at Whole Foods, record stores, and independent film festivals, but if you don't have photographs documenting those events, you might as well hang up your slouchy hat and leave behind your indie kid-ness forever. I know leaving that isn't your cup of tea or free trade coffee, so I've assembled a fool-proof guide to indie kid photography.

Marissa's Fool-Proof Guide to Indie Kid Photography

1. Indie kid photography is all about idealism. Just keep that in mind.
2. Don't use mainstream words when referring to your photography. Go ahead and purge words like "picture" from your vocabulary; replace them with words such as "photo" or "still image."
3. The type of camera you use is important, but mostly just for the purposes of name-dropping and mirror shots. For such purposes, just keep the acronym BOB in mind while shopping: Bigger. Older. Better. For any other purposes, any type of camera will do.
4. Color is important. Just remember rule # 1. Make sure you set your camera to any color besides "normal." Another option is editing your photos after you snap them. Vintage color is the best, but even just fading the normal color a little bit will do. Black and white is okay in moderation.
5. You can't photograph just anything, but there are a lot of objects and scenes that aren't off indie kid limits. Examples include concerts, indie friends, antique cars, your outfit for the day, record players, wheat fields, and anything related to owls.
6. Photos aren't actually worth a thousand words, so you'll need to add a few (preferably in a small white font... you know what I'm talking about). Obscure, dramatic-but-not-profound lyrics from obscure, dramatic-but-not-profound bands work best, but book quotes are fine too, like that one from Perks of Being a Wallflower about that time when the photo wasn't just a memory and the people in it had just eaten lunch or something.
7. Your photos need to be shared; that's pretty much the whole point of taking them. Facebook and Twitter work fine for that purpose, and Tumblr is good too. Just get them out there so people can marvel at your talent and how cool you are.

That's not so bad, right? Just follow these rules, and I know you'll be the coolest indie kid on the block in no time. Let me know how it works out for you.

Snap on, indie kid, snap on.

Marissa Lanae

Churched

Today I'll be reviewing Churched by Matthew Paul Turner. I expected the book to be insightful and easy to relate to, along with the sarcastic and cynical musings his blog-readers expect from him. And it completely lived up to my expectations.

Churched felt like a good journey through my childhood and was reminiscent of books like Catcher in the Rye. My growing up in a Southern Baptist church and dealing with a few fundamentalist Baptists definitely made this book easy to relate to. In his discussion of confusing matters, such as Jesus' ability to get inside our heart, Turner skillfully captures the thoughts of a child growing up in church. He tells detailed stories about his childhood, but sometimes they feel a little too detailed, as though he embellished a few things. Not that I can blame him; I certainly don't remember every conversation I had when I was five. That was the only real issue I had with the book.

He's honest and funny and very human. Every chapter is deeper and more insightful than the previous, but he never gets incredibly in depth. The surface-level musings feel appropriate, though, as Churched isn't a self-help book; it's more of a memoir. He's never shallow in his writing, but he does seem more interested in stating facts and satirizing fundamentalists than in providing deep spiritual truths.

Churched didn't resolve like I thought it would. He didn't detail his journey away from fundamentalism or talk much about the effects his childhood church have on him today. He ended the book well, just not the way I expected him to.

This book is an easy read, and certainly one I recommend. I leave you with a quotation from an inspirational woman Matthew Paul Turner met...

"God loves you, children. He loves you more than you will ever know. Believe that and you will grow up to do beautiful things."

in commemoration...

(I know this is a little late, seeing as winter is already wrapping her fingers around this side of the world, but this past fall completely deserves to be remembered via blog).

Fall is...

that "walking down a sidewalk under grey skies" feeling

that football and poetry and quiet feeling

the backpack, jeans, and coat feeling

the book-from-a-public-library feeling

creativity and words and music and color

marble composition notebooks and hay rides and bonfires

leaves that change and fall and turn into piles for jumping

hipsters and wallflowers and homecoming queens

philosophy

slowness

togetherness

golden sun cascading down on the bare field with the hay bales

beautiful orange leaves in the gutter of the street

hipster cardigans

frozen toes, kind people, a billion second chances, and spilling my heart out on note cards

tents and stargazing and camping and s'mores

school plays and novel-writing

moments that feel like a scene from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

when the world comes to life, but in a quiet sort of way

the "mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter," in the words of Carol Bishop Hipps.