New Projects…

Even though I was thoroughly overwhelmed with keeping up with Picture the Holidays I have started the next workshop called Picture Winter. Now that the holidays are over I am much more comfortable spending time on a photography project and I still like a daily prompt.  Many of my Picture Winter photos will also be showing up in my other new project…

Inspired by the blogs 3191, A Year of Mornings and habit…A Collection of Days,  my daughters and I started a photo blog on January 1st where we will try to contribute a photo and a short statement daily. There the focus will be embracing our daily lives and celebrating everyday beauty. I’m sure it will become hard to keep up, especially for my very busy daughters, but we are off and running and I think they are enjoying it for now.  We are still working out the kinks but we can be visited at OXOXO. 

Besides this I will be starting another online Kim Klassen photoshop class this month…I think a lot of this class will be a refresher for me but at my age I need all the refreshing I can get in hopes that some of sticks.   So it may be cold and snowy outside but I have lots to keep me busy as I hibernate this winter.

LX and II…

Sunday,  I celebrated my 60th birthday with my family and many friends…This involved a not so very secret party held at our favorite Mexican restaurant, three hours of dancing with abandon to my son-in-law’s band, and an overnight at a beautiful old inn.  I made a decision not to bring my camera and I would never have had time to take photos…but I wish I had. Photos help me remember things and I want to always remember this birthday.  

Sunday also marked the second anniversary of this blog.  I may not be sure of the future of this blog but I have certainly enjoyed the past two years.

The Meaning of it All...

Today being the first anniversary of this blog I have been giving some thought about it and it's existence.  Also, about a month ago, I made a commitment to Ruth of  synch-ro-ni-zing to write about the name of this blog. ..

I started it with a few thoughts in mind...

Perhaps the initial reason for starting this blog was to encourage myself to take more photos and to improve my photography skills...I had a new camera and a renewed interest in photography.  I took a photography class and enjoyed challenging myself through DPS assignments, Canon forum mini-challenges, and Shutter Sisters.  I enjoyed looking at  photographs online and realized that most of my favorites were of everyday objects and activities.

Somehow  I hoped to incorporate this into a photo journal and a kind of almanac of the year.   I have always been enamored of artists' journals and old fashioned almanac style books but I'm not artistically inclined and the few times I did start I wrote and drew only about three entries before quitting.  This developed into an idea of a simple photo  journal that I could document the little things that happened in a year that one tends to forget.  Later I also thought I might use this photo journal to start writing down some family and personal memories that I would like to save and pass down...it seemed that as I read other blogs it would often trigger a memory that I hadn't thought of in years...I should write it down!   Other reasons for saving a memory developed...I wanted to remember some favorite recipes and reviews of books I've read and movies I've seen.  I also started saving poems I enjoyed and quotes that touched me...

All in all I put very little thought into the name of the blog...just expressed my goal really and hoped that the title wasn't already taken...

So how do I think I did?  I do think I never would have taken so many photos of  my everyday life if it weren't for this blog...so that goal was definitely accomplished.  During the year I took two photography classes which I enjoyed too.  In the future I would like to learn more about Photoshop and processing my digital photos...and I still have to make a decision about whether or not I need a better camera than my nice lightweight point and shoot.  What I was pained to discover through this blog was how terrible a writer I am...how difficult I find it to express myself with the written word.   To think that as a child I wanted to be a writer and a poet!  So many memories I started to write about but gave up when I couldn't find the words...so many opinions that I couldn't communicate...I felt that my blog was best if I kept my writing simple although my favorite blogs to read incorporate both beautiful images with well written, descriptive words...like synch-ro-ni-zing and ramblins and Soul Aperture  among many others.  I guess my goal for this part of my blog would be to just keep on trying...