Project 365 -- And I Really Mean It This Time {New Braunfels Photography}

This time is for real. I will really truly take a photo every single day and post it here to share with you. A photo of my own choosing. One that I'm not being paid to take. This I swear on my camera. Or rather the threat of something really really unpleasant.

I've said it before and of course I've gotten busy with other projects and then not come back to it. So last night Jayme made a little wager with me. He's going to to do it too. We need to get back to our roots. Back to our passion for photography. What brought this about? You may wonder. Well this time it all started with an e-mail. 101 free prints from Shutterfly. I get this and I say to myself, "Hey how long has it been since I ordered prints for myself?" So I went to my trusty photo album wall of shelves. If you look at my albums you'll see scores and scores of albums from when my big girls were little. I filled an album in a matter of a few weeks. I shot everything. I shot their smiles and their tears, their temper tantrums and their triumphs. At that time I was on a hiatus from professional photography and spent all my creative energy on them.

But alas, I picked up the most recent photo album and looked at the last photos taken, printed up and placed in the album. March 4 of this year. March 4! Seriously. That's like 8 months ago! I then sat down at my computer and looked in the hard drive family file to see if I had shot anything personal since then. Of course I have. There was the trip to Universal Studios, there were a few little events. But they mostly sat unprocessed in raw format in need of some work and some printing. Ouch. Several hours later, I had my 101 images uploaded to Shutterfly (plus a bit more) and the promise of some new photo albums and a renewed vow to photograph my own family a bit more.

Enter in my darling husband and his little wager. I'm never one to walk away from a challenge. And with personal humiliation and a lost bet to boot, how could I turn it down!

So basically the rules are there are no rules. Well not really, but that sounds cooler. The rules are that each of us must shoot an image -- at least one -- of anything we like every single day. We are not allowed to use paid sessions to get our one image. So I can't work a wedding and then upload an image I took at that wedding and count it as my image of the day. But I can stop on the way to the wedding and photograph a pretty butterfly, if I so choose. That counts. I can take a picture of my big toe if I so choose and I just may do that one day if it's 11:45 and I'm tired and want to go to bed! But mostly I'm going to photograph my family. My home, my surroundings, my space. But it's not enough to just shoot it. We have to share it too. On our blogs. I'll be sharing my photos here. And he'll be sharing his photos on his blog here.

Today I'm sharing a photo I took this morning of my sweet kitty, Summerlove. She's so patient with me as I focus, shoot, adjust, shoot again. Truthfully I took about 6 images to get this one, but I won't cheat and use those for the next six days. I don't play that way. I also decided to challenge myself even further by using a lens that I don't use all that often. It's my beloved 85 mm f1.8. I opened it all the way to 1.8 for this image because I don't get to do that very often. I'd love to use this lens more, but it's just not versatile enough to use at a wedding when I'm constantly moving and having to shoot on the fly. I need a telephoto lens to be able to capture all those candids. But this is a lovely portrait lens that I may use a bit on this project.

So I'll shoot my image, put it in a special file on my hard drive conveniently called "365 Project" then I'll share it with you here. Even if I just say "so here's what I took today." And I'll do this every single day for the next 365 days. Even if I'm tired. And even if it's raining. And even if I have a splinter in my shutter pushing finger.

Lisa On Location Photography