Happy New Year!

I hope you a very happy, lucky and sucessfull 2013!

I will start this year with a few resolutions, as it is traditionally done.

Everything is tied to my One Little Word of choice: PLAN. As is the verb to plan, not the noun.

One Little Word is a idea which I believe was started by Ali Edwards, where you choose a word on which to focus for the year. She runs a workshop every year, but I am not using it do to anything creative with it, just to remind me to plan.

I am a huge procrastinator and can be sidetracked easily, so I have to PLAN every day, setting myself small, achievable goals.

Some of my resolutions are to eat better, exercise and educate my children.

I am also doing Project 365 again. A photo a day for the whole year. I hope to do better than I did last time, but I won't consider it a failure if I miss a day or two every now and them. I am more focused in learning and practising in every shot than having a perfect record.

Inspired by the theme suggested in the ILP forum - Myths, Legends and Make Believe - I took my first couple of photos.

I only started officially today (01/01/13), because it's neat that way, but I took a practise shot yesterday.  I taped a Christmas decoration on the window and placed a pot of tulips in front of it.

And today's is called Amazed. The "fairy" is something my son got with his Happy Meal in McDonalds, I was going to put it in the bin, I am glad now that he didn't let me.

The day after...

Halloween last year, I started my Photo-A-Day project. I thought it was project 365, but I forgot to take into account that  2012 was a leap year. Silly me. Not that it mattered, because I didn't take a photo everyday, but I took a photo most of days. I haven't counted how many but I would guess my "success rate" was somewhere between 300 and 320. I have uploaded most of the photos in shuttercal - when I am done, I'll count them up and let you know.

What is worth it? YES. Did I become a better photographer? Probably. What could I have done better? I should have challenged myself more. Did I enjoy it? Yes. 

This Halloween was my first free day, no obligatory photos. But of course, I took some (bad) photos of  my children in costume. Also we drove from Tralee to Dingle and back - beautiful scenery - it was a rainy day with sunshine too,  and we saw a record number of rainbows, 4 or 5 I think. We were in the car and couldn't stop, but I managed to take a few pics from the car.

And yes, I will continue to take a photo a day.

I am giving myself a few days' break. I want to first make an album with all the photos I took. Also I want thing about what I want to accomplish with my second year of photos.

If you have in any way interested in photography, it is a great exercise, I thought I would become to hate it at some stage but it didn't happen. Granted, there were some days (weeks!) when I couldn't think of anything interested to photography but on the whole it was a great experience.

Still doing Photo A Day

Well, sort of, in fairness I should rename it "4 or more photos a week project".  I definitely take lots of photos most of the days, but there are days I couldn't be bothered.

If you look at my Shuttercal calendar, it is full of holes, but I''ll try to be more diligent. I found that my best photos come when I set some sort of target, so this week I am going for 2D/3D. That is, mixing dimensional object with photos/prints or drawing. That's something I've done in the past. In fact, my first photo of the 365 project is 2D/3D: ( cup and spoon over an old drawing of mine)

I like this one too: (buttons over a Dulux paint brochure)

And recently I came across this beauty in pinterest: (by Kari Herer)

Source: hannahdollerycreative.blogspot.ie via Elisa on Pinterest

I am trying to do something creative this week, but for the time being, I'll leave you last week's photo of my son who, after seeing her sister's crown, demanded one for him too.

70 days of Project 365

I am so happy that today I have completed 70 days  of the Project 365 (photo a day for a year).

Actually I am hoping to do 428 days since in the 1st of January I started the Photo A Day class in Studio Calico. It is great to have a community which supports each other as you can imagine sometimes it is hard to keep it going.

Nicole Samuels, who is teaching the class, introduced us to shuttercal.com and I have uploaded all my pics in the site.  I also am uploading in Flickr and am planning to have an album printed at the end of the year, but the beauty of shuttercal is that it is in calendar format.

I haven't posted my album pages for a while and won't bore you with pages and pages - I'll only post this week's compilation.

They're snapshots, not portraits, but it is a start. One of the photos didn't go at all with the others, so I decided not to have it here.

Next week I am shooting food!

Have a nice week, TFL.

September Summary Layout

I am glad I finished October's summary layout and have 50% of November done. Here's September's.

I used a sketch by Shimelle Laine.

I really helped me to get the layout done, I find hard to make original multiphoto layouts.

My home still remains mostly undecorated for Christmas,  but I put this little cuties up. They're placecards from Next. Now I need something red to complement them, anybody seen a red reindeer somewhere?

Red and White Christmas

Do you know when sometimes you get all crafty and bloggy after a long dry spell?

Well, that's me at the moment. I want to use at least a bit of my energy to get started with the Christmas decorations. We didn't do much decoration last year, but I want to put a little bit of effort this year and it is going to be all red and white. Except the tree decorations which will have all the colours of the rainbow as always.

Before  December, I always bring down a banner with little booties numbered from 1 to 24 and fill it tiny chocolate pieces for the children, our version of the advent calendar. But it was always a pain to find something small enough to fit 2 in each boot. And when I found it would always be unwrapped do I had to wrap 48 tiny bits of chocolate with tin foil. Boring! This year I decided that for this amount of trouble, I could so something crafty at least. That's what I did:

The circles are from a digi kit to which I added the numbers and punches. The little bags are sandwich bags. The original bags were too big, so I had to cut then into 4 smaller ones. Of course when I cut, I had to glue the bottom and sides again which took a while, but still I enjoyed making them.

And the photo is an entry for project 365.

An Apple a Day

I am behind in posting, I am in the 5th week of project 365. Here is week 3, I haven't compiled week 4 yet.

In week 3 I decided to have a theme, which  was a good idea, but I was a bit too narrow on the theme: Apples!

By the last day, I had run out of ideas. And time, as I left the photo taking for the last minutes of the day.

Project 365

 First of all, a shout: GRÁ,  thanks for the comments, could you please email me with your address at elisamayn at yahoo dot com.

As if I didn't have enough things to catch up I started project 365. Which is to take a photo everyday for a whole year. This is an attempt to take my photography to the next level as I feel I didn't improve at all in the last 2 to 3 years.

To make it feel more manageable, I am thinking in weekly chunks, somehow taking a photo a day for a week (for 52 weeks) doesn't seem as daunting.

I just finished my 3rd week but I haven't uploaded all the photos yet, here are my first 2 weeks.

Two days to get used to the whole idea, 29/10 to 30/10

First week 30/10 to 06/11, some taken at home, some taken in Westport. Photos were really boring so I inverted the colours of a couple of images and run an action in another. Cheating I know.  2 Chandeliers, 2 ceiling lights.

Week 2 07/11 to 13/11. I had the worst flu in years but still managed to take a photo a day. Last one is my son's bike in the porch seen from indoors.