October 7^th was the six month mark for my blog.  And, it’s been about a year since I made my Instagram profile public.  I was intrigued by the J. Crew #SHINYPONIES Contest, where I posted and hashtagged photos of my shoes for the chance to win a year of shoes curated by Jenna Lyons each month.  I was determined to win and so excited when my first photo was chosen for J. Crew’s #SHINYPONIES page on jcrew.com.  I have since had over 20 photos selected for the #SHINYPONIES page.  Here are a few of them with links to the J. Crew #SHINYPONIES page and purchasing information linked below the grid.

Leopard / New Balance / Stripes /  Pom-Poms / Stripes / Leopard / New Balance / Paisley / Gold

The best moment of this social media journey happened last week when I woke up to a number of  notifications from J. Crew letting me know that my photos were selected for one of their posts.  One of their selections was a photo taken by my six-year old. I beamed with pride and could not wait for him to wake up so I could tell him.  He has recently been helping with some of my Mani Friday photos, too.  Sharing this love of photography with my six year-old son has been a blast.  He has an amazing eye when it comes to shooting with just the iPhone.

As a child I enjoyed photography and my high school class was one of my favorites.  I liked taking self portraits (long before selfies) that were artistic because I liked that I could control the art in front of and behind the camera simultaneously.  The logistics were harder with the timer.

In college I took an Art History course on Photography and it was among my favorite classes.  It was nice contrast with my Economics major.  Cindy Sherman was one of my favorites. She was a big influence, especially her Untitiled Film Still series .  I recently saw the Cindy Sherman Imitation of Life exhibit at The Broad  and I could not help but snap this selfie in front of a photo of her playing all four roles.

Combining my love of shoes with photography was a no brainer when it came to the #SHINYPONIES contest.  I already had a shoe obsession and it was fun to feed it by photographing shoes.

I have always said that shoes can tell the story of your life. Yesterday I featured a pair from a 2005 trip to Antwerp in Antwerp Memories and Pink Cherries.  They have walked with you through experiences.  In my case, I almost always buy a pair on vacation.  Then when I put them on I remember Paris or Antwerp or Hawaii.  When I did not win the #SHINYPONIES contest, I was disappointed, of course , but not discouraged. I decided to just keep on going.  Six months later I started this blog.  I wrote about where the name came from in It all started in Paris with these shoes….  I really need to thank  J. Crew and Jenna Lyons for the inspiration to document my love of shoes as art in a whole new way.

XO,

JAE

This is not a sponsored post, in fact none of my posts have been sponsored (so far).  I will definitely make that clear when the time comes.