I've been seeing hundreds of the daily photo submissions to our group this week and they are awesome! However, I know there are some of you out there who are still quietly zeroing in on your submission for your first Project 52 so I wanted to focus on you for a moment.
I finally posted the final images for my 2011 project and I feel like I've put that year to rest now. As I've mentioned, I broke the rules of the 52 and decided to allow myself 3 images every week. I tried to break it down as 1 photo for each daughter + a random but some weeks just didn't even follow that pattern, particularly birthday weeks.
My overall goal for my Project 52 was quality over quantity. I'm a notorious over-clicker. For any given photo, I likely have 20 more of the exact same pose. I was burning through my hardrive space at lighting speed and it wasn't pretty. In 2011 I tried to slow down, edit more, delete more, and only save my favorites. It was a wonderful lesson I will carry through to this year's project and it has definitely changed how I shoot.
For me, the roughest photo of the entire project was the very first one. Somehow, I felt so much more pressure on that first image to be something special. I spent more thought on that one photo than any other for the rest of the year. I'm feeling the same pressure this year. I think I finally shot my first 2012 photo this afternoon but I'm going to let the rest of the week play out before I choose it officially.
If you're struggling with your first week, I wanted to share what my goals were for last year. Maybe this will help you find a good direction of your own:
1. Represent all the major family members in my daughters' lives with at least one solid portrait: Daddy, Mommy, all three grandparents individually, and my sister are all featured in one particularly special photo. My favorite of the portraits is probably this one.
2. Capture both daughters' milestones: crawling, first steps, first bike ride, first day of school. Everything BIG that happened in 2011 is represented.
3. Showcase the seasons: Periodically I took my third random photo to show the weather, the garden, holiday decorations, anything that represented the time of year. It gave structure to all the other photos and I'm so glad I included them.
4. Try different points of view: I have landscapes and macro shots mixed in with full body portraits, head shots, and even detailed shots of tiny fingers and toes. I'm very proud of the variety represented.
5. Find my editing style: I'm not certain I accomplished this one just yet. I played around last year with several looks but generally I tried to have the overall project "fit together" stylistically. There are a few odd ducks, but overall I think my project looks good together.
But in the end, these were my goals. Think about what you want to look back on at the end of the year. What do you hope to have learned from this? Spending a few minutes considering your goals will definitely help ensure you're pleased with your set at the end of the year and also helps keep your motivation going strong during the summer months when your inspiration may wane.
Have you set a theme or specific goal for 2012? I'd love if you'd share them with me in the comments. I'm still putting my new ones in place and will be sharing more ideas next week. I'd love to feature those of you doing something a little different!
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