My 365 Photography Project

One of the most empowering advances of the digital era has been the introduction of the digital camera. Remember the days of carefully selecting photos to take knowing that every print needed to be paid for? At least in our family that enjoying taking photographs, we almost needed to budget for the cost of developing! But with the power to now take hundreds of photos at a time and then weed through them for the keepers, I believe it has unleashed the creative side of many. Hence the development of 365 Photo a Day Projects.  

I have been intrigued by other bloggers who have begun these projects and decided that this was the year for me to do so as well. But what is a 365 Project? I did a little searching but could not find much of a definite answer other than it involves taking one photo per day for the entire 365 day year. As you can see from a few shots from my project that are sprinkled throughout this post, they can be as random as you would like. Those photos are posted to a host site where others can post their projects as well. Flickr where my photos are held allows for the author to leave a few comments regarding the nature of the photo as well. When all is said and done on December 31, you more than likely will look back on your entire year in photos and be amazed at what caught your interest each and every day or may simply just reaffirm those things that are important to you in your life. You will find a Blogger widget by Blogger Buster on the right hand side of this blog which shows thumbnails of my nine most recent photos posted to my 365 Project. I decide to use Flickr as the host source for my photos as they support a 365 Project group there. I know there are other sites as well, but this was my jumping off point. At one time I had a widget by PictoBrowser but went back to the Blogger Buster widget as it was sized better for my column. You can still see an example of PictoBrowser's widget on our hobby farm site Abernathy Creek Farm.  

Because I know that I have a photo to post each day, I have started taking my camera along with me wherever I go. Sure enough, I will quite often be thankful I did. Each evening the photos are uploaded to my computer, and I sift through them for 'the one', which in itself can be a hard decision. Then I edit or crop it if needed. I'm currently using Picasa as it is simple to use and then upload it to Flickr. From there it is automatically updated to this blog. Yes, that seems like a lot of site hopping, but if I hadn't taken the plunge and just started with those applications I was familiar with then perfectionism would have once more taken over and the entire project would not have begun.  

This is a perfect example of what Charlotte Mason, a brilliant educator whose methods many homeschoolers follow, would have deemed 'mother culture'...something that 'mother' can do to improve her own culture and education while being at home with her children. She obviously would have never envisioned the scope of digital photography, but she would have given it her thumbs up, and I couldn't agree more. A few books checked out from the library to read up on digital photography skills, a little more practice with my camera, stretching a bit by researching and adapting this blog to accommodate the project...it all adds up to mother culture accomplishments and a sense of pride.  Do you have a 365 Project? If so, leave a comment with your link if you would like to share. We are all so different but yet so much the same, and it is incredible to now be able to see the world through each others lens, 365 days a year.