Reflections On A Reclaimed Year

The end of the year, such a busy, chaotic season, but I always make time to reflect. It helps me to see how far (hopefully) I have come creatively, things I liked and things I didn't and what I learned from them. Also things I want to pursue further in the year ahead, and things that it is finally time to let go off.

Personal Projects

I have half-heartedly dabbled in personal photography projects before, never lasting long enough to learn what I needed to learn from them. Early in the year, I took a class taught by Pam Korman called The Personal Project You Already Shot. The only personal project that I had enough images of to put together for this class was my self-portraiture. The class was awesome! I finally, finally started printing my images with regularity - I did 8 X 10's so I could lay them out to sequence them for the project. It is helpful to have the physical images to move around. I completed the class, made a book from Blurb, and learned a lot along the way. Is it my finest work ever? No. But I started and I finished, there is a lot to be said for that. I plan to work on more personal projects in 2018, I like the non-rushed feeling of them.

Starting in June, I decided to do some #30dayprojects for the summer, picking one word to focus on and use for inspiration in my photography each month. June's word was flowers. I photographed my own gardens, flowers at local gardens and the farmers market, and then the meadow at a nearby county park.

The Meadow became my personal project for 2017. Starting in late June, I went almost weekly to photograph at sunrise.

I honestly don't remember what July and August's words were.

The Meadow

The meadow taught me so much.

It taught me discipline and joy.

It taught me a love for sunrises and that magic golden light. It taught me to love my tripod, at least on location. It taught me to love my 55-250mm zoom lens, before the meadow I used the 55-250mm maybe once a year. One week I forgot that lens, that taught me something too, I was very uninspired without it. Every lens has a purpose, I just needed to find it.

I loved watching and capturing the changes from week to week.

A paved loop trail lies in the middle of the meadow, I discovered so much by walking both directions of the loop.

I am sure there will be a few visits to the meadow next year, I can't imagine not.

The Blog

Almost six years of blogging, and still I have more to say, more to share, more people to connect with. Each year my blog sees a slow but steady rise in readership, which always amazes me.

The blog posts I enjoy writing most are on sharing what I have learned about photography, either through classes, trial and error, or something I have read.  I also love sharing my travels, whether they are day adventures, solo adventures, date days, or family vacations. All of these are planned again for 2018.

Photography Conference

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

I went to my first photography conference combining it with vacation. We had a great time on vacation, and I learned a lot at the conference and met some really talented photographers. I also learned I can play with the rest of the group, I am good enough.

My husband and I also attended a iPhone photography workshop, it was nice to do it together, and see how different our styles are, which is a good thing. I can see us doing more of this in the future.

Words

I developed a love of reading poetry this year thanks to Laurie Wagner and her 27 Days of Wild Writing course. I can see poetry playing a bigger part in my projects in 2018.

I am still doing my daily Morning Pages. At the end of September, I started my fourth year. Each morning I also read the entry from the year before. It is good to read how far, or sometimes not, I have come.

I have definitely felt a stronger pull towards photography this year than writing.

Photographic Style

I have really honed my photographic style this year. I would say it is most prevalent in my iPhone photography and processing. My obsession with leading lines and paths continues.

2018

I am excited to explore 2018 and see what awaits me.

The Photo Album

Nothing puts things in perspective faster than realizing it is the second week of December and yet again I haven't started on the family photo calendars. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just our family's calendar I had to make, I could milk that out for another week. But I also make one for my dad every year filled with photographs of barns, covered bridges and rural landscapes, my side of the family's Christmas party is Christmas Eve. So it was time to sit down at the computer and get it done.

Going back through the year in my Lightroom catalog tends to be a painful process for me. I am always a better photographer by the end of the year making me love everything I took October through December and hating disliking everything I took before that.

This year as I started at January 2016, I tried to keep an open mind and an open heart and look for the photographs that spoke to me each month. It was interesting to see the change in my work over the course of the year. January through March (the cold, snowy months) I spent a lot of time indoors working on still life projects.

April brought the arrival of a new furry monster grand puppy to the house. There is nothing more challenging or more rewarding than photographing a puppy.

May saw the weather finally warm up and a return to day long photographic adventures for me. 

June the Farmer's market was in full swing and our favorite stop every Wednesday and Saturday was Lemonjello's coffee stand and our visit with James, the man behind the airpots. Many meaningful conversations involved books, photography, jobs and job searches while pumping Six One Six or San Sebastian into our to-go cups.

In July my husband and I were able to get away for a couple of short vacations, one of them being northward.

August saw a return trip northward. My husband had business and I had freedom.

September signaled an end to the unbearably hot summer we had, finally I was able to explore the fields and meadows with my camera.

October brought heartbreak with the loss of my beloved Scout.

November found me committing to a 52 week photography project that is setting my creative world on fire.

And here we are December, the last month of 2016. The return of snow and cold couldn't deter me from spending a morning at the beach.

Each of these photographs is my personal favorite from each month, none of them made it into the family calendars. While each is different, they collectively tell the story of my year, my life, my journey.

Yesterday I finished my book club book a week ahead of schedule.  There is one book I have been meaning to read all year, but something else always distracted me, yesterday I couldn't stop thinking about that book, so I plucked it off of the huge pile of unread books on top of my bookcase and settled on the couch with it. On the last page of the introduction I read these two paragraphs...

"Ten years ago in my Harvard lectures, I tried to listen to a single day of my life in such a way. What I propose to do now is to try listening to my life as a whole, or at least to certain moments of the first half of my life thus far, for whatever of meaning, of holiness, of God, there may be in it to hear. My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.

For the reader, I suppose, it is like looking through someone else's photograph album. What holds you, if nothing else, is the possibility that somewhere among all those shots of people you never knew and places you never saw, you may come across something or someone you recognize. In fact -- far more curious things have happened -- even in a stranger's album, there is always the possibility that as the pages flip by, on one of them you may catch a glimpse of yourself. Even if both of those fail, there is still a third possibility which is perhaps the happiest of them all, and that is that once I have put away my album for good, you may in the privacy of the heart take out the album of your own life and search it for the people and places you have loved and learned from yourself, and those moments in the past -- many of them half forgotten -- through which you glimpsed, however dimly and fleetingly, the sacredness of your own journey."

I want this last part to be my mission.

The book is The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner.

Lessons Learned From Finishing

In January of 2012 I began a blog called Becoming A Finisher. The name was chosen because I had a horrible time completing any personal project that I started. By starting that blog I was declaring publicly that I was going to finish personal projects.

That blog, though now finished, continues to hold a special place in my heart. I did learn to complete projects but I gained so much more in the process. I learned how to improve my writing skills, my photography skills and my post processing skills. I found a writing voice, became authentic in my writing, unafraid to share my joys and my hardships, something not all that comfortable for an introvert.

The point of that story is that I never would have learned those things if I hadn't started and if I hadn't stuck with it, even on the weeks that I didn't have anything to say. I struggled through the creative blocks and came out stronger on the other side.

One thing that remained unfinished during my Becoming A Finisher days was finishing a 365 photography project. What is a 365 project? It is, taking a photograph of something every day for an entire year. You can chose to participate in an organized 365 group or go it alone. The important part is documenting, somewhere, your daily photograph.

I had started 365 projects on two previous occasions, abandoning both of them within the first month. I know that part of the problem was that I tried starting these projects on January 1st, which seems good in theory. The start of a new year, also a good time to start new projects. In reality though, I live in Michigan, starting a photography project in the middle of winter can get boring very quickly. I prefer to be outside shooting if at all possible, and white snow can only be photographed so many ways.

Last August I was contacted via email by my friend Susan who lives in Maine. She was starting her second year of a 365 project beginning on September 1st. She was putting together a small group of friends to join her on this journey, she was wondering if I would be interested in joining the group.

This opportunity had so many advantages: It started on September 1st, just going into Autumn, my favorite time of year. It consisted of a small group of eight ladies, many of whom I knew already from previous on-line classes. It provided accountability. It provided a place to post my photos everyday, our own little group on Flickr.

I told Susan that yes I wanted in, knowing that it was now or never to actually complete this goal that was on my dreams/goals bucket list.

I started out with the intention of shooting mostly with my iPhone, having just finished Susannah Conway's August Break 2013. A month of daily photography prompts shot with your phone and posted on Instagram. I loved that experience. I loved the prompts. I loved shooting with my iPhone. I loved the Instagram community. I could easily keep doing this for a whole year.

Then September 1st came and there were no more daily prompts. I had no idea what I was going to take a photo of. This is what I came up with...

Not a strong way to start a 365 photography project.

The iPhone shooting lasted one day. On September 2nd I switched back to my Canon dSLR. The frustrating thing was that I saw that uninspired first picture every time I added a new photo to my 365 project album on my Flickr stream. There are photos in my 365 album taken with my iPhone, in fact there are quite a few good ones, but at that moment I needed to put the phone away and challenge myself with a different tool.

As I look back at the 365 photographs I took this last year, I see that a lot of them are quite good. Some stink, but that is going to happen. What I see most though, is a tremendous amount of photographic growth. I also see the stories behind the photographs. Observations that I wouldn't have made if I had abandoned this project as I had in the past. A year of my life documented every day, a priceless treasure.

On August 31st I took my 365th photo..

Again not an award winning shot but definitely better than the first one. I had just picked these heirloom tomatoes from our tiny vegetable garden. I had taken an armful of them into the house already and as I was coming back to get these, I noticed how the sunlight was hitting the tops of the tomatoes. I grabbed my Canon, and tried shooting them from a variety of angles. I loaded them onto my computer, processed the one I liked the most, and then I added it to our group on Flickr as my final 365 photograph. Ultimately this is the biggest lesson I learned from this project; seeing, doing and finishing.

On August 31, 2014 I Became a Finisher.

I will not officially be doing another 365, although I have started an album on my Flickr stream called Everyday Moments, where I plan to post a photo of something that inspires me over the course of the day. But if there is a day where I am not inspired, like at the beginning of February, it is okay if I don't take a picture that day.

Our small group has decided to stay together, not in a 365 capacity, but in a continued sharing of our work. We will continue to encourage one another as we travel down the photographic path together.

The Journey of 2013

I am not one who looks back too often. I tend to be focused on today, or looking forward. But since 2013 was the first year that I chose a word (JOURNEY) to signify my year, I thought it would be good to look back and see where 2013's Journey has taken me.

Thanks to Susannah Conway's Unravelling the Year Ahead 2014, which began with a section called Unravelling The Year Behind the process was fairly easy. Simple questions to think about and answer.

1. First of all, did I have a word for 2013?
My word was Journey - I knew 2013 would be a Journey to better health, more confidence in my body, and pushing myself to improve my photography. All of these things I feel I accomplished.

2. What did I embrace in 2013?
Strengthening my body. Allowing myself a day a week to devote to my creative work. Meeting and enjoying new friends.

3. What did I let go of in 2013?
Guilt for taking time to work on my creative outlets. Negative friends. The feeling of not being good enough.

4. What did I discover about myself in 2013?
I love exploring. I love abandoned and decaying buildings. I love history. I am returning to a world of writing and story telling.

5. What was I most grateful for in 2013?
A supportive husband who is willing to watch me grow, but who is also willing to step out and try new things with me. I am also grateful for my personal trainer, Maribeth. The relationship we have built this year means the world to me. I am also grateful for some wonderful new friends.

6. When did I practice bravery in 2013?
I committed to a 10 mile, 2000 feet in elevation gain, hike/climb over Siyeh Pass in Glacier National Park. A big hurdle for me, it was hard but I did it.

7. List three achievements that I am most proud of for 2013.

• The improvement of my photography skills.
• Sticking with Personal Training for the whole year.
• My new blog series "Taking the Backroads". 

8. How has my life changed? What have I learned about myself?

• I have more confidence in my photography skills and feel ready to commit to making an on-line portfolio. I am good enough!
• I have more confidence in my body and know that I can lift weights and become stronger.
• I am more confident going places by myself and I am not so afraid to carry my camera into places or stop by the side of the road. I don't feel so self conscious anymore.

Describe 2013 in 3 words:

           JOURNEY                     CONFIDENCE                         JOY