A couple of friends of mine started doing a 365 Project about a year and a half ago. I saw some of their pictures and sort of thought it was a cool idea, but never got around to starting my own project. What finally convinced me that I had to get started was seeing the photo-book they had printed up of all of their 365 photos in a hard bound volume. I thought that was a fantastic keepsake! A whole year condensed into one volume of pictures.

So I started in September of 2010, and I've been faithful ever since. I look at all of the other creative and fantastic photographers on this site and I am a little humbled. And it also seems that fact has left me a little torn. I am really interested in improving my photography skills and taking creative and artistic pictures. On the other hand, the original inspiration for this project was to capture "a year in the life" so to speak. So I have so far been trying to capture photos of things that happened, are part of my everyday life or are things I have encountered in my day-to-day comings and goings.

This doesn't always make for a great shot. It also sometimes leaves me a little bored with my possibilities for a shot on a particularly busy day. So I am left wondering if maybe I should split the project in two. One for a true "snapshot" (perhaps even no better than snapshot quality) of what is going on in my life; and the other for perhaps only occasional posts of really good artistic shots. My life is too busy for me to find time to really set up a great shot every day.

So we'll see where this leads me. I may split, I may not. I will attempt to throw in some theme weeks: hands, specific colors, black and white, self-portraits, nature, etc. But that can sometimes preclude capturing the day-to-day, so it will be interesting to try to balance the two goals. Only time will show what results I get! I look forward to looking back in a year!