Resolution: Project 362

I haven't set a real New Years resolution in a few years. It seems that for the past 3 or 4 years, we've been flying by the seat of our pants. Between dental school, job changes, Whit's birth, and moving across state and back, there's been little time leftover to focus on anything extra. Plus, resolutions always tend to be related to things that you don't really want to do - like dieting, exercising or saving money.

With an impending move, a new baby on the way, and more job changes inevitable, this maybe isn't the year to try a resolution. But here goes.

My New Years resolution is to learn to use my camera better. We got a digital SLR Canon 4 or 5 years ago. I've loved having it, but I've rarely used it in anything other than full automatic mode. My goal is to take at least one picture a day & share as many as I can here. I'm going to take as many as I can off of the auto mode. I won't be posting everyday, b/c I don't think I'd keep that up for more than a few days. However snapping a picture only takes a few seconds. This also will be a way I can document the small details of our everyday life, that often get overlooked.

I got the idea to do this from a site called Project 365. While I'd love to participate in this site, these are serious photographers who post here, and I'm not quite ready to expose my very amateur photography skills to their critiques.

I didn't decide to commit to this until after the New Year started, so I'm not beginning on Jan 1. My first pictures of 2011 were on Jan 4, so we'll call this "Project 362".

January 4, 2011 - "Post Bath"

This photo was taken minutes after getting out of the bath tub. This is a typical post-bath scene. Once of us chases Whit around trying to dry him off and get his PJ's on him. His only interest is in playing. Here he's playing with his Thomas the Train laptop, a Christmas present from his Aunt Dee and Aunt Kay.

Now, just mere paragraphs after I mentioned one of the points of doing this is to learn to use my camera off of "Auto", I'm posting a pic taken in auto. Because our house is so dark (& Whit is so fast), I haven't figured out how to set the shutter speed or aperture inside at night to take a picture that isn't fuzzy. Maybe by the end of the year I'll have mastered this!