I posted last week that I was starting a new 365 project. You can check that post out here if you like. Basically a 365 project is a commitment to taking your camera out each day for a year and taking a picture. The idea is to capture your daily life AND to hopefully learn how to take better pictures along the way.
So after posting this last week on my blog, I invited anyone who was interested, to join me in this challenge. I’m so pleased with how many of you joined me. Many of you even setting up your own blogs. Some of you adding a folder to your Facebook photos to add your daily pictures to. And maybe more of you out there that I don’t know about, doing it privately.
The reason that I refer to it as a challenge is because it gets challenging to keep up with after a while. I tried to do this last year and only made it about 2 months. But I think a lot of the problem was that I put too many rules in place for my 365 project. Like making myself not post pictures of my kids every day. Trying to come up with new and creative things to photograph every day. Thinking that I HAD to post every single day and that if I fell behind I might as well just quit.
WHY in the world would I not post pictures of my kids? They are my most favorite thing to photograph. That was a stupid rule!
Coming up with new and creative things to photograph is great. But not when it stresses you out and makes you want to give up. Another dumb rule!
OK, yes the idea is to take 365 pictures so really you should take a picture every single day. But let’s get real. Somedays it’s just not in the cards. Somedays you just don’t feel like it. Or you are sick. Or someone else in the house is sick. Or you just need to unplug. There are lots of reasons why it just doesn’t work everyday. BUT, if I miss a day or even a week, I won’t give up. Even if I only end up with 300 pics for the year, that will still be awesome.
The other rule that I’m not going to place on myself is posting a picture that was taken on the exact date that I am posting it on. Sometimes when I am going back through pictures I have taken in the past, I find a gem that I didn’t notice before. Something that I love and will help tell our families story in 2011. Sometimes I just might post an older picture. The idea is to document a year in your life. To captures memories. Not to adhere to a bunch of self made rules.
So this year I am thinking about it this way. I am documenting a year in our life. Yes I am calling it a 365 project and will follow the basic premise of a 365. But the final outcome is a year in our life!
So I’m writing all this to say to those of you starting this journey with me, don’t give up. It is fun and exciting right now. But there may come a time when you think, “I can’t keep up with this.” Or “I missed a whole week so I’ve failed and need to quit.” Figure out why you are doing it and keep that in mind when those thoughts creep into your mind. Like I said above, for me it’s about documenting a year in our life and at the end I will create a blog book for our family. That is the only hard rule that I care about.
So those of you that are worried about posting more than one picture per day because you can’t pick just one, don’t worry about it. That’s like saying I have too many good memories and I have to delete some of them. Post as many pictures as you like. It will make your year end book that much better!
Those of you that are nervous about putting yourself out there for the world to see, don’t worry. We love seeing what you are doing. Don’t you love peeking into the rest of our blogs? I bet you do or you wouldn’t want to do it for yourself. We love seeing yours too! I for one am loving seeing what is going on in all of your every day lives!
Those of you that are worried that your pictures aren’t good enough to share, DON’T. How are your pictures ever going to get any better if you don’t practice? You would probably be shocked by how many thousands of pictures I have taken to try to figure out how to use my camera. I didn’t learn how to take better pictures with my camera sitting in it’s bag in the closet.
Those of you that don’t know how to work your blog just yet, don’t worry. You will figure it out. It just takes time. Play around with it until you get it the way you like it. If you are using Blogger, I might be able to help you with some things if you need help.
So here is a list of all the 365 blogs that I am aware of so far. Please, if you have started a 365 project and have set up a blog for it, let me know. I would love to add it to my blog list.
Karla just set up her blog and doesn't have any pictures posted yet.
I'm posting all these in hopes that we can all follow each others journey and support each other. Leave comments on blogs. Get to know each other a little.
Happy picture taking and blogging!
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