January

February 6, 2013

I recently tried to find a photograph of the girls all together that I would have taken in the last year. I used to make a point of taking at least one of those every few months. Well, it turns out that last year I didn't make much of an effort because I did not have one picture like that. Not one.

Last year was also the year I didn't take a picture every day. There's nothing saying that if I had taken a picture every day I would have the photo of the girls I was hoping to find but there would have been a much better chance. And when I look back at my last 365, I took a lot of great pictures that I never would have taken otherwise. But the last 365 left me feeling a little burnt out. I wasn't excited about taking pictures anymore. The things that seemed worthy of a photograph felt all too familiar. Like I had already taken pictures of them so why pull out the camera.

Near the end of the year I was thinking about photography more and more. I still didn't pick the camera up and take any pictures but I was thinking about it more. That all changed when my new lens arrived. I wanted to take pictures again. And I was doing it for the fun of it. I could see how much of the past year I had missed and would never get back and I started to snap the kinds of pictures I wished I had taken.

All of these things have collided and I am now on a new 365. I started on January 1. I can already tell you that I haven't taken a picture every day. Some days were just too busy. This is real life after all. But I do wake up every day knowing that I need to take a picture. My eyes are always on the lookout. This time I seem to be more tuned into taking pictures of my everyday life. More pictures of the girls and our home and how I want to remember them in ten, twenty, fifty years from now. They might not be award winning shots but I can see now that it's not the point.