Category: Photography

One of my main goals for the 365 project this time around is to take it a little bit less seriously. To that end, I’ve allowed myself a bit of flexibility: if I take four great pictures on Monday and Tuesday ends up being a trainwreck of a day, rather than stress myself out trying to take a picture on Tuesday, I’ll just steal one from Monday. This will be the exception rather than the rule, but it will also ensure that the 365 project is something I enjoy rather than dread. So far, a whole 20 days in, this has already come in handy. And yet, I feel this compelling need to confess it to you, less you are not able to sleep at night after examining the meta-data in my imagery (I swear I’m not looking at you, Angela) and realizing that the picture posted for Wednesday was actually captured on (gasp!) Sunday.

Phew, glad I got *that* off my chest!

And now, some pictures!

We were delighted to discover that the local Chinese food joint prepares what turned out to be the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. In fact, we’ve had to limit ourselves to only having it once a month, cuz left to my own devices we’d have it at least once a week. Totally drool-worthy! It was the neon and the pink interior that engaged me on this picture, and something in it was evocative of a poster called Boulevard of Broken Dreams that I used to have in my room when I was a teenager. Taken with my iPhone.

Lucas and I were playing kick-the-puck in the driveway when the snow removal crew showed up, to the delight of the curious toddler and his sidekick. It was the light in this one that caught my eye. Also taken with my iPhone.

Manotick’s Haunted Mill (you saw this one earlier in the week.)

A boy and his dog.

The treehouse in the back yard on a cold January day. I was trying to capture something more moody, but I couldn’t quite get it right.

The first TtV shot of the new iteration of the 365! This star is part of a dangly ornament that hangs in the kitchen patio door. You would have laughed if you saw me trying to capture this, standing on my tip-toes on a step stool in my kitchen, trying to angle the camera so that I had flat white snow as a background and not the play structure. The diagonal angle is a total fluke that I started out trying to achieve, gave up, and accidentally achieved anyway.

I’ve been admiring this falling-down old silo at the corner of Bankfield and Rideau Valley Drive for ages, and knew it was just a matter of time before it made its way into my photographic repertoire. I took this shot with both my Nikon and my iPhone, and ended up liking the version in my iPhone much better. The frame and processing are from an app called Camera+.

Another iPhone capture: pine cones against snow. This one uses processing from the Instagram app.

And finally, your weekly serving of cuteness. Someone got a haircut!

So I’m thinking this 365 project will be a lot more playful, with plenty of hokey processing from various iPhone apps and retro TtV captures. I think a few of these, the old barn in particular, come dangerously close to being overdone — but I like them anyway.

I feel like there should be theme music to this post, but I can’t decide if it’s a triumphant fanfare or something more ominous. Yes, it’s true, I’m back on the Project 365 bandwagon again.

I’ve been considering it for a while. The Thousand Picture project was great, but there wasn’t enough pressure for me to take a daily picture and I’d gone weeks without lifting my camera when things got truly hectic from September to November. (And man am I glad I wasn’t doing a 365 during those months because truly? I never would have made it through.)

Another reason that I faltered a bit with my pictures, I think, is that during most of my 365 I worked downtown in what is probably the most photogenic area of the city, smack dab in the middle of Parliament Hill and the Byward Market. I mean really, I could point my camera in just about any direction on my way to or from work and come away with a good image. And while my current office is a million times more convenient, it’s an equally exponential amount less photogenic.

Conveniently, however, I just happened to have recently moved to an incredibly photogenic neighbourhood, with a house that is bathed in delicious natural light. So I traded photogenic work for photogenic home — that seems fair!

And, that was about all the encouragement I needed. Well, that and the convenience of taking, processing and posting photos through my precious iPhone.

So, here we are again. I think this 365 will be a little more, um, relaxed than the previous one. As in, a picture will be posted every day, but there may be days when the picture was actually taken a few days before. My project, my rules! Also, I will not be quite so hard on myself when it comes to what makes a “worthy” picture of the day. They don’t all have to be masterpieces, and in fact, I’m looking for more simple documentation than fine art this time around, especially when time is short.

Last but not least, I didn’t think the regular blog fodder would hurt. I missed posting my daily pictures in weekly round-ups. Once I decided that yes, I was indeed silly enough to embark on this adventure yet again, I counted back and realized I’d posted a shot every day since December 23, so I gave myself a 11-day head start. Now I’ve only got 354 days to go!

Always start with the cute, the rest will follow:

From the Christmas Eve photo project:

This was the picture that finally swayed me into deciding to try this again. Expect to see copious amounts of Watson’s Mill pictures here in the coming months!

This one caught me by surprise. I was coming up the stairs from the basement just as the sun was setting, shining through the front door and making shadows of both the wreath on the outside and the hanging decorations on the inside. This is almost straight out of the camera.

This is the locomotive at the Museum of Science and Technology. I have taken dozens of pictures of this thing over the years and liked none of them — and the one I adore was a quick snap with my iPhone. Go figure!

Taken through my bedroom window! Chickadees on a lilac bush. You think I can train them to eat seed from our hands?

More Watson’s Mill. I waited for about 15 minutes in the early morning cold, watching from the bridge and hoping the clouds would obscure the sun in just this manner!

My mother’s holiday table. I loved the greens, and the soft focus. One of those “just because” shots that makes me happy when I look at it.

More cuteness!

These, plus a couple of other pictures I’ve already blogged about in the past week or so, are the beginning of what I hope is 365 days of new challenges and moments captured.

Here we go again!

Hey, did you know that once upon a time I used to take a lot of pictures? I know, you’d never know it from the blog lately. In fact, there was a while there where I didn’t even touch the camera for two whole weeks. I’ve missed it horribly!

After another showing fiasco on Saturday (we cleaned for two hours for a showing, just to be prudent even though we already had the conditional offer, only to find out that our agent had canceled all the weekend showings. And forgot to tell us. Gah!) we decided that we all needed a family day. On Sunday, we took all three boys and the Nikon to the Richmond Fair for a day of rides, games, ponies and cotton candy.

It was, by all accounts, a perfect day.

I almost made this last one my picture of the day, but I think when I look back on this project in 20 years, it will be the pictures of the boys enjoying themselves that will mean the most to me. But damn, this one tickles my fancy. They’ve even got matching eyeglasses. Aren’t they adorable?

Happy Tuesday!