This week in pictures: The end of (yet another!) year in photos

When I finished my first 365 project three years ago (almost to the day), I felt like there should be a ticker-tape parade in my honour. Heck, it was a big enough deal that CBC’s All in a Day invited me in to the studio to talk about it. (Heh, I still like to joke that my photography is perfect for radio.) When I finished the second one in 2011, it was Christmas Eve and the big finalé sort of got lost in the holiday shuffle.

And here we are again, with another year of pictures taken. I didn’t feel the need to celebrate, but it is a nice time to look back and see the fun things photography has brought into my life this year. I’ve had photos appear in magazines like Macleans, Good Housekeeping, Ottawa and Ottawa Family Living, in newspapers here and abroad and on lots of websites (some of which actually even paid for them – but most of which, sigh, just took them and used them without permission.) I worked with so many delightful families on portrait sessions that I wouldn’t even know where to start calling them out, but I loved working with each and every one of them and am grateful to them for trusting me for their portraits. For a while in the summer I was booked so solidly that I actually had to turn people away – something I never would have imagined. While in 2011 the photography business was mostly a summer venture, in 2012 it became a full-year-round venture from the Old Navy Family Day event in February (they just asked me to come back again this year!) to family portrait sessions in December.

What a year it has been! And, before this gets too long, let me just slip in a quick thank you for your business, your friendship, your encouragement and your support. Being able to share the joys here with you make them all that much sweeter.

So here’s the last week of my latest year in photos. It has been an incredibly busy week, and my Nikon has not once come out of its case – another milestone! Every photo this week is an iPhone photo taken during a moment stolen from some other task, further proof that the best camera is the one you have in your hand.

This was Saturday during the January thaw, where I spent a large part of my day chipping a 2″ deep layer of ice off the driveway. Such a Canadian way to pass an afternoon, yes?

On Sunday, the warm temperatures brought this crazy ice fog that lasted all day. It was a perfect day to huddle in a movie theatre, so the big boys and I went to see The Hobbit. Amazing movie!

Apparently this week’s theme is ice. I found this on my way to work on Monday and had first walked past it and then paused as my brain processed it and I walked back a few steps to get the photo. Caution indeed, this must have hurt when it landed!

I wish you could see the horses more clearly in this photo. They’re gorgeous Clydesdales, on a farm a little south of Manotick.

I’d gone down to the CanvasPop factory down on Hamilton Ave to pick up a canvas print (details to follow!) and saw this across the street. I love the warm honeyed wood against the deep blue, and the beer-making supplies are not exactly what you see on the sidewalk every day. This is the Beyond the Pale Brewing Company.

The final shot of my first 365 was something I planned for months. This week, when I knew I was on the last day, I tried to put a little more thought than usual into my photo (instead of my usual “hey, squirrel!”) and had a vague idea that I’d like to take a photo of me with the three boys. Unfortunately I didn’t check their social calendar and they were (gasp!) not available. So you’re stuck with a photo of me, just like in the last shot of the first 365, but with considerably less planning and duct tape. Just me, hiding in the light, which would make an excellent title to my memoirs someday, don’t you think?

And then it was another day, and I still felt like taking pictures. Conveniently, it was the first day of seasonal skating on the Rideau Canal, and I liked the idea of beginning with a beginning.

Here we go again! 🙂

So help me with this. On Flickr, I have called my photo-a-day sets “Project 365” and “Project 365: The Sequel” and this latest set “Not another 365.” I thought that was clever (I slay me!) because you can read it as a lament (“oh no, not another 365!”) or a coy denial, or a justification for my looser interpretation of the traditional rules of a 365. I’m not having any creative inspiration this time around, and have temporarily labelled it “Not another 365: 2013 edition.” Lame, eh? But I do like having the yearly sorts, and feel the need to come up with a decent title for the set.

Inspire me, bloggy peeps. What should I call this iteration of the seemingly perpetual photo-a-day project?