Write. Click. Scrapbook.

You've Already Calendered Your Next Photo Project

My final day of photo projects is here! Thank you all for your sweet comments, I've had such a fun time putting this week together, I hope you've had an equally good time getting some new ideas for your photo-taking projects.

New team member Marie Taylor agreed to participate in a month long project of black and white photos. She was already planning on doing a photo-a-day, so she said this would be easy. She explains:

I did this photo-a-day because we had a lot of big events and big changes with Lily graduating and the big recital. But it's funny-I'm not generally a big moment scrapper, or a big moment photographer. I love the normal. I love the everyday. I am someone with a terrible memory-and I mean terrible. I forget the details-things that make my life what it is. Funny things my kids say, toys they play with, certain poses Lily will do over and over, developmental milestones that go by so fast they can so easily be forgotten. And then there are the big things. Recently my two-year-old Charlie fell and ended up having to have his front tooth pulled. He is fine now-still recovering, but fine, but my sweet little boy has lost his baby tooth very, very early. In time I'm sure it will become him, the norm, but right now, I am so very glad I was focusing on capturing him-capturing that perfect smile. (Can you tell this Mama is still very sad?) I guess this is yet another reminder that things can change slowly over time that you may not notice the change, or they may change in an instant and the best way to remember it all is to just take pictures.

Our Aussie WCS team member, Jody Dent-Pruks signed up for my request and offered up her own idea: a month of dinners. She also suggested a month of portraits of her boys (see Monday's Project 365 Kids link in the bonus section), but when she said dinners, being someone who enjoys food, how could I pass that one up? I'm sure her boys are very handsome and all, but...

I'll let Jody describe the project in her own words:

Taking the photos was easy...I did 365 last year so I fell back into that daily routine very easily. I usually plate up the family meal at the kitchen bench in the same spot each night, so just before I took the food to the table, I snapped a photo.

I can honestly say that I did not do things differently just because I was documenting it...no point in pretending we eat another way; no fun to look back on food fads we may of had at the time (um, at the moment we love anything mexican LOL). This is our everyday food, and how I serve it up each night.

On reflection I thought the meals, as a group, did not look colourful enough. I work full time, I get home around 5.30 6.00pm and I can guarantee that the boys are all “starving” and need food NOW! As a result I do a lot of one pot meals, hiding those pesky vegetables like any good mama would! It is also winter here in Australia so we are not eating as many salads and bbq’s; now it’s time for the soups and stews!

 

OK, the voyeur in me loved seeing what Jody and her family eats every night for a month, anyone else notice the pancakes with ice cream? 

Then, like any good scrapper would, Jody took her collage and turned it into a layout. The journaling is just a recap of each day's menu. How easy is that? The best part? Read Jody's last statement to find out (I'll highlight it for you, just in case):

What’s not to love about being able to include a lot of information in a small space. Now page after page of photos of our dinners would get a little...boring. This collage brings similar elements together and gives it much more impact when viewed at the same time. A double page layout will fit just fine in my scrapbook.

When I look at a month of meals like this it says a lot about our family. There is not a lot of red meat because I don’t eat it. Of course I add a some meat each week but it doesn’t dominate and the boys have learned to embrace chicken like I do!!

Sometimes lunch is so big that dinner is very light, or in the case of Mother’s Day the dessert we couldn’t fit in became dinner.

You can have the occasional junk food (McDonalds) and still have a balanced diet.

Breakfast for dinner is fine by our family.

And finally...thank goodness for pasta!!!!!!

So thanks Emily, a totally doable project and a nice slice of family life.

My final contributor is another new member, Donna Jannuzzi. Her project and comments really hit a chord for me. She's in the middle of a move to a new home. She has two sweet little boys and a husband to transition. I told her she didn't have to do this project for the blog, but she put together something that ended up having just as much impact as the other contributors' projects because it's really honest.

Here are Donna's thoughts on her project:

I was extremely distracted at the time of this project with all of the details of our move (which is why there aren't too many photos in the collage; I didn't take many to start with).  But, I did enjoy this project.  Basically, I thought of it as a practice-run since I have never done ADITL before but I do want to do it again once I can focus on capturing more of the details of our day and once we actually settle back into a routine.  What I learned is that it is easy to be in the moment and observe the small things in life if you choose to.  It is harder to stop though, and take the picture.  Sometimes you have to just live life you know and not focus on recording it (like when things are stressful or out of the ordinary).  And then other times, it's good to take note, to stop and write something down or grab the camera and take a picture.  Obviously, as a scrapbooker I see the value in recording memories and moments.  Hence the motivation to give this project another try.

I've done a couple of these ADITLs myself. For the first one, I stopped about 1/2 way through the day but decided to put together a page anyway. I turned all the photos blue, because I was doing it to fulfill an ad challenge as well. Kind of like Donna's project, it wasn't the full day like I'd originally intended, but I did capture things that make me remember that time in my life. I was mailing a layout to Simple Scrapbooks that day. :)

This next one I did last summer, about this time of year. It was a Thursday, I know that not from the date that I stamped, but from my piano students' pictures. They were my Thursday crew last year. Funny how pictures can take you right back to that day. For my background, I used a TTV stamp from Studio Calico, it reinforces the idea nicely.

More places to find ideas and articles on photo projects:

1. photojojo/projects
2. Digital Photography School (DPS) and search "photo project" there are 5 pages of ideas.
3. Digital Photography Projects
4. Books, including this one and the one from yesterday.
   

And there you have it. Was I right? Did you get a ton of ideas? And I didn't cover even 1/10 of what's out there. So have I described you? Are you a photo project junkie like me? I hope so! I want to sincerely thank all the WCSers who helped me this week. When I originally conceived this week, I was going to do a few projects myself and feature some of the things I've done in the past. I'm glad I decided to get help because there is more than one way to interpret each challenge. I appreciate how I gave everyone a basic set of directions and they took those and ran with them, turning the projects into their own and creating far more than I ever expected. I appreciate when they came back to me and asked if they could do this instead of this. Please take that as an example, there should never be any hard and fast rules when it comes to capturing your life. Seeing all the variety the girls came up with this week has been as inspiring as searching the web for projects. So thank you WCSers and thank you readers!

You Can't Stop Thinking About Them

Hi, it's me, Emily, again. Did you think there'd be this many different projects out there? I was frankly amazed at the variety I found!

Francine Clouden is my first contributor today. Her assignment? Do a photo walk and find things that make you happy. Sounds easy enough? She describes her neighborhood as "a not very attractive urban area" and she  wanted to see if she could "find things around here that make me smile and feel happy." So she packed up little Kieran headed out on their daily walk and she said she took a picture based on the following criteria: "If something made me smile or feel better then I took a shot!" I think from the picture collage she sent me, she lives in quite a happy neighborhood. All the flower and vegetable stands had me at hello.

Francine said that since she was paying more attention to her babe (as she should!), she hopes to get out and do this same walk all on her own. I hope you can do something like this too, you don't have to head out with a list of specifics to get shots of, you can just collect images of things that make you happy.

Expectant momma Erin Sweeney wanted to play along, but she suggested she try it with a fun twist. She took a belly shot everyday for 21 days. Not only did Erin see her baby growing, she also learned some things she didn't expect.

Erin: When I started thinking about this photo project,  I knew I wanted the belly shots to be more than just me standing in front of a wall. I thought the best way to do this would be to take the pictures wherever I was doing something, so that when I look at them I can remember what I did that day.  Sometimes this worked - working out, planting flowers, out to dinner, at my sister's pool; And sometimes it didn't - often I forgot and ended up taking the pictures at 11:59 in the bathroom mirror.  I wanted the pictures to tell a story of my month in general, in addition to capturing my pregnancy, and even with the multiple shots taken in the bathroom, I think it did.

Looking back over my pictures from the past few weeks, I realized a few things:
1. Emma likes to sneak in pictures.
2. I wear blue a lot. Also, pink.
3. I need to clean my mirrors.
4. I really needed that haircut I got towards the end of the month. (I cropped my head out of the one that showed me this.It wasn't pretty.)
5. I should remember to take both a full-body shot and zoom in, since I had to crop almost all of these down.
6. I really do look like a tomato when working out.
7. Next time, remember which way I faced for the first picture, and keep with it.
8. Pretty sure I took more belly shots for this project than with my previous two pregnancies combined.

My final WCS helper today is Melissa Kaiserman. Her assignment was to get all the letters of the alphabet in photograph form. I left it open as to how she interpreted this, but gave a couple of suggestions. One being this project by JocelynneB on Flickr, another was the alphabet from nature and everyday objects, like this group on Flickr. Finally there's getting photos of the actual letters. Elizabeth turned me onto the website where you can type any word and the site will access Flickr to get those letters extracted from signs, billboards, etc. (I honestly thought this particular bit of information was in her Scrapbooker's Almanac book and I searched through it twice with a fine tooth comb. Then just now, as I was typing this up, ready to admit I couldn't find the link, I remembered it was in a Special Issue of Simple Scrapbooks called Scrapbook Play. I guess my memory does work once in a while!) Any way, I digress. Here's what Melissa put together. It's rather amazing, don't you agree?

 

I love how Melissa approached this, some of her photos are so clever! This is what she said about her process:

I first approached this project with the plan to take fresh pictures around our house and yard since I'm home with my kids most of the time.  But that process actually started stressing me out a little bit, because I was having a hard time finding what I needed!  So I decided to shift my focus to browsing my existing digital pictures.  Wow!  I couldn't believe all I found when I looked at those photos with new eyes.  The more I searched, the more I noticed.  In the end, I only ended up using 8 photos taken specifically for the collage; the rest came from what I already had.  Cropping helped the found letters stand out even more.  I had such fun with this little scavenger hunt!

My final project for the day, courtesy of me:

Colorado in the summer is gorgeous. Not everyday, but nearly so, the skies fill with big fluffy white clouds that seem to make the sky twice as big and three times as blue. I know it's not just this state, but it's something I do love about living here. So for the past month, I've been taking photos of the clouds. Not everyday, because I didn't want grey and rainy to part of my collection. Here's a mosaic of my collection so far. I saw an idea on another blog to frame these and make an entire wall decoration with them. You can bet I'm starting to collect frames at garage sales this summer!

And today, if you have any photo project sites or ideas you'd like to share, I encourage you to add them to the comments section. I'll try to share them in Saturday's post. If you were going to mention photojojo.com, don't worry, they're already in Saturday's write-up. Love them.

 

Some very random things I've collected links to make up the bonus section for today.

1. Portland Grid Project which has inspired groups on Flickr to do the same, including the Atlanta Grid Project, Victoria Grid Project, Austin Grid Project, Brisbane Grid Project, Dresden Grid Project, and North End Grid Project. Basically, they take a grid of the map and their members shoot that particular part of the city and upload the photos. Wouldn't this be fun to do of your own neighborhood? I'm already scheming...
2. Touching Strangers is a project of one photographer where he finds strangers and asks them to pose together, one stipulation. They must touch each other in some way. It's a really interesting group of photos. Worth the time to read.
3. PhotoMemes.org This site is on hiatus, but there are still some really cool ideas and links (some don't work anymore, just a heads up).

and the giveaway goes to . . .

THANK YOU! for the wonderful stroll down memory lane. I haven't thought about Z Cavaricci's, guess jeans with zippers, or shrink to fits for a long time. I giggled over how very many of you adore your purple pants. And green. Thank you to those who included photos and links. My goodness. I laughed out loud several times.

Thank you, too, to Fancy Pants, for generously providing this ginormous stack of paper.

Ready to find out who is going to be busy with new paper??

Terri, please email us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com before midnight on Saturday so that we might get you your paper!!!

Stay tuned for more photo fun with Miss Emily Pitts!

give.away.day. featuring FANCY PANTS

Have you ever wanted to just go buy one of everything? Then today is for you. With more than 40 double sided paper

is generously providing you with an array of papers from their 4 of their recent lines: rusted sun, about a girl, road show, and my family.

HOLY MOLY! If you would like to be considered for today's giveaway please leave a comment telling us about your favorite fancy pants. Mine were from the 80s. Used men's 501s from the thrift store, with the legs rolled and pegged. And to complete the picture, add in black webelos with dimes instead of pennies. And a wide black leather belt. Oh, it was a good fashion time...

Now it's your turn....

Comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST and one lucky number will be drawn at random and posted tomorrow. Don't forget to check back as it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number before midnight Saturday! Good luck!

You've Started Seeing Patterns in Your Photo Taking Practices

Hello again! Thank you for all your sweet comments, it's nice to read that I'm not the only one who enjoys photo projects. There are so many fun ideas out there, I hope you will share your completed projects with me,  you can contact me through my personal blog. I also hope you're not getting tired of photo projects because I have plenty more to share with you. Today we've got a cool project based on a blog called 3191: A Year of Mornings. It's something I hadn't heard about, but co-founder of WCS Elizabeth mentioned she'd like to do something like it for her photo project contribution. We were able to rope fellow co-founder Marnie into the project and I left them to go at it (not that these two busy ladies don't have enough things WCS related to do...). 3191 is an interesting concept. Two friends that live 3191 miles apart but manage to connect through daily photos taken and shared. Their venture has turned into two books, one focusing on morning and the other on evening. Their current project can be viewed here: 3191 Miles Apart. 

And now, without further ado, here is the Elizabeth and Marnie version, and their own comments. 

Marnie: Agreeing to a daily photo assignment with Elizabeth is like being a back up singer taking center stage with the rock star. Elizabeth is rocking her second year of project 365. Last year I made it 3 days before I forgot. This year, nearly 2 weeks. I know, eh? Seriously, daily projects are apparently outside of my skillset. But when Elizabeth, queen of all things daily, asks, you say yes in an effort to be a better person. Maybe with an assignment and commitment to someone other than just myself it might happen??

So I said yes, and began. And except for a few days where I painted (the walls in my house) from sun up til sun down, I did quite well. Especially considering my May to-do list. I was very proud of myself. I tried to scrapbook the photos as I went along to add incentive to not forget to take my pictures. (You may see most of the layouts on my blog). I was happy to get some regular shots of the plain nothingness of our mornings. I am home with my littles and we are slow and sleepy in the morning. I found myself taking many many pictures of my sleepers. I also realized that I forget to do a lot of the daily stuff for Nigel, which means some mornings were spent hurrying like crazy to complete projects like teacher appreciation and science puppets. I really must get more organized.

As for photography, I was so happy to not forget to take my pictures, that I didn't spend as much time as I wanted learning new stuff and getting better at my craft.

And when I saw Elizabeth's photos? Well, I swooned and thought of all the artistic things I should have concentrated on. Hmm. Maybe my kids are my art?? It certainly isn't that I love mine any more than she does hers. teehee!

Oh, and I was so happy to have succeeded, that I took my 31 photos and put them together in a photobook (a current obsession). I made one with journaling and then realized I wanted the photos to speak for themselves, so I redid it. Without words. You know what they say? A picture's already worth a thousand.

Click here to view Marnie's book.

Elizabeth: Marnie and I decided to try out the daily morning photo project featured in 3191: A Year of Mornings, a collaboration between Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes. The only guidelines we made for each other: take a photo in the morning, preferably before 10 am if possible. We decided not to stipulate whether or not the photos would be of people or inanimate objects, indoors or outdoors. I love the variety in the final product!  It's interesting to me that while we didn't specify what kinds of photos we were going to take ahead of time, Marnie's focused more on portraits and mine were more detail-oriented shots, to help set the context of the morning. If we were to do this project in another month of another year, no doubt the results would be a little different. (i.e. I am far more detail/surroundings oriented in the busy months of May and December, whereas July might be a slower month filled with more time outside focused on child shenanigans. Or whatever.)

When I did Project 365 in 2008, I tried very hard to stay updated within three days during the entire year, and usually pushed myself to write journaling to pair with my photo the same day I took it. In this project, we didn't keep journaling, and we didn't pair our photos at the conclusion of each day; we're fairly sure that a few of our matches have the dates mixed up, but in the end, that probably doesn't matter because it was still a really fun way to connect two friends separated by a lot of miles (1,290 in our case). But with a project that includes journaling with each photo, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to get in the habit of pairing photo and words the same day if at all possible. It's too easy to get behind and give up otherwise!

As the organizer of this week's projects, I have loved getting into the minds of the WCS team members who helped me out. They each offer little hints on how to succeed at each project, but the part I've loved the best is their honesty. It just makes me happy that I know these ladies, if not in real life, through their projects.

And this isn't really photography based, but it is friend and art based, and since we're doing the friend thing, I thought I'd share it here as well. It just inspires me. My friend Paula sent it to me. It's a blog called twodaysinjuly.com and it's two friends who each post once a month, thus the two days in july. It also has a deeper meaning, but I'll let you read about it. You should check it out.

I have one other project I've done in the past to share before I finish today. It happened completely by accident. My husband and I took a trip to Switzerland in 2007 and when we first arrived, we took a walk through Old Town Zurich. I started taking pictures of doors, they don't have doors like this in my hometown! The more doors I took photos of, the more cool ones I started noticing. The fun part of this project was my husband really got into it as well. He even got a picture of himself taking a picture of a mirrored door. It was one of those bonding things that make a marriage enjoyable. I made a layout of a few of the most interesting ones.

Photo Challenges are a great way to get outside your box. To have someone tell you to try something new can teach you things about yourself. They aren't projects per se, but you could group the results together and call it a project. A few fun sites include:

• Photo Challenge blog
• DPS Challenges
• Photo Friday
• DPReview Challenges
• Round Robin Photo Challenge

I'll be taking a break on Thursday, but be sure to check back for give.away.day. and then Friday is chock full of photo project goodness again, you won't want to miss out!

You Have Your Camera With You At All Times, It's Not THAT Heavy

You're itching to see more photo projects today, aren't you? The only problem with this topic is I find myself wanting to go out and do ALL of them, RIGHT NOW. And in that state of excitement, I find that I usually don't get anything done at all. So last fall I started something that, while not consistent, has become a part of my expectations and I try to fit it in to my month (I'm batting .300 since I started). I call them my Friday Inspiration Field Trips. They arose from the desire I always had to stop and take a picture of all the really cool old barns that dot the landscape around my house, but that I never actually do because I'm always shuttling someone here and there and it's never in the timetable to stop. So I now make a day dedicated to just that. Stopping and taking pictures. It's not really a photowalk, it's more that I grab my camera bag, my friend Ronda, and drive somewhere interesting. I live near a lot of quaint little towns that are ripe for the inspiration picking. My most recent of those field trips was to a town called Longmont. When I first started these trips, I thought I could capture the whole city in a day. I don't suggest that. You'll miss out on a lot. Go back multiple times. The Longmont trip only captured two things. We actually went to three different places, but the first place we were way too scared to ask if we could take pictures.The store owners were glaring at our cameras. Which reminds me, when you go on a photowalk and are taking photos of someone's personal property or items they are selling, it's a really polite thing to ask if it's OK.  Especially when I tell them it's for personal inspiration. I've only been told no once, they'd had competing shop spies steal ideas before and didn't want to take any chances. People appreciate being asked. And I appreciate not having someone grab my camera, throw it to the ground and stomp on it...

This particular Friday Inspiration Field Trip we went to an artist's emporium (the scary place), a restaurant that used to be a playhouse, and a used bookstore that used to be a hardware store a hundred years ago. In a couple of the pictures, you can see the foot markings used to measure out rope and chain. Lots of wood and brick on this day.

1. corner sign, 2. 1881, 3. in crime, 4. isn't it the, 5. exactly, 6. hang a shingle, 7. barely legible, 8. no longer working, 9. 50 foot mark, 10. 30 foot mark, 11. perspective, 12. out of use

Friday Inspiration Field Trips could happen on any given day of the week, but whatever day you choose, it allows you to see your surroundings in a new light. I highly recommend them.

My first photo project guest today is another new member, Monika Wright. Monika agreed to help me with in the self portrait catagory. Here's why:

My goal during this period was to get some photos of myself...rather than a bunch of photos of everyone but me. It really was perfect timing as I realized it was “slim pickings” when I was trying to find a photo for my w.c.s. bio. I began with a list of photos I thought would capture who I was, what I do, what I wear and where I go. For the most part, I marked most of my ideas off the list.

 

Notice not every picture that Monika took was a picture of her face? Does it still count? When she shared her plan of attack with me, I cheered! Monika is a think-outside-the-box kind of person. She took pictures that represent things important to her, and that is a self-portrait, don't you agree? Of course it counts! Just by looking at her mosaic, I learn that she has a Mac (me too), she drinks Dr. Pepper (I used to, but can't anymore if I want to sleep), she is very organized (my utensil drawer is organized, but to my B type standards), and she like to garden (me too!). And she didn't say a word (OK, she told me she was an A type personality, and that the bridge is special because that's where she was married, but that's it.)  I like how she describes her project's progression. It illustrates nicely that you can break rules when you are doing projects.

Your project succeeded in making me more aware of being photographed rather than just being the photographer. I began the project with my self-imposed rule of photos of me or photos that represent me taken only by me. At times, this was impossible and I did have my husband take two photos and my son is in a self-timer shot with me and he pushed the button because his arms are longer than mine (ha, taller than me, too and I’m tall!). And, I’m okay with that because it allowed me to meet my goal. So, now I have photos of me. They’re not all the best quality: some are taken with my iPhone camera, some are blurry because it’s hard to focus when you’re using the timer and taking a photo in the grocery store or in the car. I did get to use the awesome tripod I received for Christmas, so that was a very good thing.

Participating with you in this month-long project also allowed me to learn something new. I have now created, with the help of my Flickr account and bighugelabs.com, my very first mosaic. I want to do a little more research so that I can manipulate the order the photos appear, add text, and maybe even some digital patterned paper. But, I’m content with my first try.

Notice that? Yesterday I told you about bighugelabs.com and how Kelly made her first mosiac for the photowalk? Today Monika said the same thing. So it must be easy...

Long time WCSer Rebecca Cooper agreed to help me out by doing a different kind of photowalk. Where she went and what she photographed was up to her, but she had to get at least three different perspectives. This is another one I found on the Prine Photography Facebook Events page. At Rebecca's suggestion, we altered the project so she could include her kids. She took one photo, handed the camera to Emily who took another photo of the same thing, and then handed the camera to Carson so he could take it. Can you tell who took which photo? I think the Cooper kids have their mom's eye for photography, don't you?
Rebecca took the first column, Emily the second, and Carson the third. Wouldn't this be a fun thing to do with your kids? I know my Annie would tilt everything just like Emily did, she's picked that up from me and I have to smile every time I see pictures of her friends posted on Facebook. I know which ones Annie's taken just from the tilt. Here's what Rebecca said about her project:

The weather has finally warmed up around here enough that we thought we'd head outside and explore our little town for our photographic adventure. The kids absolutely loved every minute of it...as we drove we were all on the lookout for fun things to photograph. And getting to take a picture with moms camera was a thrill in and of itself. I just made sure I was right next to them and that the neck strap was around their necks and it was safe and worry free for me. It was just as fun after we got home to download all the pictures and have a look at them all. The kids loved seeing the pictures they'd taken. It was the perfect outing for all of us enjoy together and I know we'll be doing it again soon!

That's all for today dear readers. Tomorrow promises to be equally as inspiring, grab a friend...

 

Remember Polaroids? Well There are LOTS of photo projects that utilize the Polariod camera, here are a few of them:

1. Clown Nose Polaroid Project on Facebook
2. Before I Die I Want To
3. Polaroid Traveling Camera Project on Flickr

You Know You're A Photo Project Junkie When...

When I think of photo projects, the behemoth of all photo projects--Project 365--comes to mind. Take a picture every.single.day.for.a.whole.year.

I freely admit I am a 365 drop out. I've tried it a couple of times, but so far I've been unsuccessful in my quest to capture a year in photos. I do not however let that failure define my picture taking in any way, instead, I do mini projects that bring me a great deal of satisfaction. I didn't realize just how many photo projects I've actually done without knowing they had a name. I simply enjoy taking pictures I thought. I've been collecting pictures of fun potty people, so far I have sculptures, Olympians, and Colonials. I take pictures of natural disaster warning signs. I have tsunami, hurricanes, and avalanche warning signs. I plan to create mini albums for them all someday. I never considered them to be a photo project, but now that I have labels, I am a photo project junkie. My hope is that this week will inspire you with hundreds of photo project ideas, and if you think I've left something out, on Thursday, I'd love to have you share what things you've found as well. There is SO much out there on photo projects, I probably should have done two weeks worth of blogging.

One place I spend way too much time is the photo storage site Flickr. I love finding projects that others have done, which is how the seed of this week began. I was on Flickr and saw this advertisement for The Happiness Exhibit.

Like any good consumer, I clicked on the link and was directed to the exhibit and spent a good half hour just exploring the photos that make [insert your country here] happy. It got me thinking how fun it would be to put together a mini album based solely on the photos that make me happy. This got me thinking about what other fun photo projects were out there, and well, this week you get to see just a smidgen of my findings. I promise you'll have more than enough inspiration to get you started.

If you, like I, have failed at Project 365, please do not give up hope. There are other ways to document your life through photo projects. I have asked a number of the WCS team to help me out and I think you'll see, the possibilities are great.

First off, I have Paula Gilarde. She agreed to participate in a project I found on sh1ft.org. I found this site to be very creative, but was disappointed to discover that the content is not updated as frequently as I'd like to see. But there are some great ideas, enough to keep you busy until the next time they update. Anyway, I digress. Paula and I have been friends for almost 4 years and we talk regularly online, but I thought it would be fun to do a photo interview with her, just to see how well I thought I knew her. This came from the Sept 2009 Q&A: The Photographic Interview.

1. What is the first thing you see in the morning? (didn't know)
2. The biggest thing to happen to you recently/soon? (knew)
3. Your best mirror shot (had a feeling)
4. The person that you see the most in a week (knew)
5. Your favourite shoes (knew)
6. Your favourite meal (should have known)
7. The colour of your eyes (knew)
8. Your favourite place to be on a Friday night (didn't know)

Here are Paula's answers, in column form. She added an overlay for each picture, you'll see why in a minute.

And here are her answers explained in written form:

1. The first thing I see in the morning is my alarm clock. It’s a projection clock so the time is displayed on our ceiling but it’s not easy to see when it’s bright out. I tend to wake up before six A.M. out of habit. Someday I’d really like to sleep in but I think that won’t happen until the kids are a lot older.

2. The biggest thing to happen to me recently, didn’t really happen to me – it was Tommy’s surgery. My baby had his first operation – I was probably more affected by it than he was. He had hospital bracelets on all his limbs. Even Tigey, the stuffed animal that he brought in with him, had a hospital bracelet.

3. I don’t usually take photos of myself in the mirror. Thanks to Emily I have learned the fine art of self-portrait taking. I’m glad I took this photo though, because it makes me realize how the rest of the world sees me a lot of the time – peeking out from behind my camera!

4. The person I see most in a week is Tommy. Kindergarten is four full days a week so he’s home alone with me on Mondays. One extra day with just the two of us, but that will be all over next year when he heads to first grade. I wonder if he’ll miss his mama-time?

5. My favorite shoes are my Chucks – my high school musical shoes, as Molly used to call them. They make me feel fun and funky, and not quite the 40-year-old suburban mom that I am. Not bad for a pair of shoes!

6. My favorite meal is the one I order every year when we go to CKC in Manchester NH. It’s a chicken salad sandwich on a croissant. It has all kinds of yummy thing in it including walnuts and grapes. I like it so much that I ordered it twice on weekend. This year it wasn’t on the menu, much to my dismay but they made it for me anyway!

7. Lots of people comment on my eyes – they’re a very pale blue, with a hint of green. They can change color depending on what I am wearing – I wore teal to my brother wedding and people remarked about how the dress matched my eyes! The same thing happens when I wear blue.

8. My favorite place on a Friday night is wherever I can be together with my family and friends. A couple of years ago we started having a play-date with some friends after school on Friday. This turned into play-date plus dinner when the dads came home. Now it’s a tradition. There’s no place else I’d rather be!

Then Paula took the photos and answers and made them into a quick mini album. Isn't that fun? She's got a great little snapshot about her life as she sees it right now.

 

I asked Paula why she agreed to help me out with this project. Being that we are friends and she wanted to help me out was a natural answer, but I was also impressed to find out she is currently doing a 365 project and used this as fodder for that as well. What a brilliant idea, killing two birds with one stone. I never thought of doing that. That might help me to succeed someday.

My second photo project guest is another new member, Kelly Jeppson. Kelly helped me by doing one of a few photowalks I had suggested. I found the Facebook page of Prine Photography, it's a goldmine for photowalks. According to Wikipedia:

Photowalking is the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things that the photographer may find interesting.It is usually a communal activity organised by camera clubs, online forums or commercial organisations, sometimes in the form of a walking tour. Often the aim is to practice and improve one's own photography skills rather than a specific focus on documentary photography.

Because Kelly is a mom to three young kids, she wanted them to help her out with this project, so I asked her to do a scavenger hunt I found in the Events section of the Prine Photography wall. She said having the kids along for the hunt helped her see things she normally wouldn't have noticed. That's one of benefits of photowalking, it's a great way to spend time with your kids, teach them about seeing the world, and learn a bit yourself as well.  For the purpose of this week's blogging, I changed up the idea just a bit, making these walks for family's not a large group activity. Here's what Kelly and her kids were looking for:

1. Photograph an object that you see daily from a point of view that you haven't viewed it from before. (i.e. fire hydrant from ground level, your front porch from the roof, etc.)

2. For the theme of "simplicity," photograph something that is calming to you.

3. Take a picture of something that has an animal printed (or sculpted) on it.

4. Photograph what you think of as the "landmark" of your neighborhood (i.e. giant oak tree, corner liquor store, giant purple house etc.)

5. Take a photo with shallow depth of field. (refer back to Photo Walk #15 for some helpful tips!)

6. Photograph your breakfast, morning snack, or "get up and go" beverage that gets your day started this Thursday morning. (If you miss Thursday, then take it Saturday morning)

7. Photograph some new technology that you think will be outdated 10 years from now.

8. Take a photograph something with a rough texture.

9. Choose 2 colors to create a basic color palette and then photograph 3 logos, signs, or advertisements that use that same color palette.

10. Photograph something that you come across while on your Photo Walk in which someone's "left their mark."(i.e., a sticker on a sign, a name carved in a tree, hand print in the sidewalk)

And here are her pictures.

And here are her explanations of the above photos.

I added a few extra to fill out the grid, so some of these are freebies. Going across each row starting with the top row, the photos are:
1. An image of simplicity: there are these great sculptures of chickens and Victorian houses at our library, and my kids always want to visit with the chicks after we check out our books. I love the way this baby chick is protected by the house and the grass.
2. An animal sculpture: we live in a former agricultural community, so it makes sense that there are chickens.
3. My morning beverage: orange juice.
4. Freebie: the path that my kids love to run on outside the library.
5. My youngest visits the chickens.
6. Something I see every day from a new angle: I got down on my knees to take a picture of the grass.
7. I see these trees a lot, and my kids and I always wonder what kinds of animals could live in the holes. I took this picture to fulfill the "rough texture" requirement.
8. Shallow depth of field? Wasn't quite sure about this one.
9. The LDS Temple in the corner canyon is a landmark around here. I wish I had a better zoom so you could see it better.
10, 11, 14: I chose a red/white/blue color palette and found objects or signs that shared that palette.
12. Gabe imitating me by trying to take my picture.
13. A bird's nest with a bird on it!
15. My kids left their mark on our basketball standard (the beginning of our walk).
16. Technology I hope will be outdated soon, so I can get an upgrade!

For more information on photowalking, a keyword search of the word will yield great results. Also the Wikipedia definition has a few great links as well. Have fun with your photowalk! I'll be feature more WCSers and their walks this week for even more inspiration.

Oh, and one more thing, I asked everyone to send me their pictures as mosaics or collages. You can make your own if you already know how in your photo editing programs, but I thought I'd share the bighugelabs.com mosaic maker. Our own Candice Palmer introduced it to me a couple of years ago, and I love how easy it makes the process. It's really slick, all you need is a Flickr account and a set and you can make your own mosaics. Kelly made her first one ever for this project, turned out pretty cool, don't you think?

 

Everyday, I'll share some other fun ideas I've found but haven't had the time or resources to attempt at this point. Today, it's some groups I've found on Flickr.

1. About One Object 365 Days Project. Yes, I know it's my dreaded Project 365, but this one caught my eye because it's a ONE thing. I could do one thing.
2. 100 Possibilities Similar to the one object project, but with a little twist. Based on a book by Sue Bender that now I want to read.
3. Scavenger Hunt 101 and once you finish that, you can move onto Scavenger Hunt 212.
4. Project 365 Kids. I'm not against the 365 idea, really, I'm not.
5. There are over 7000 groups if you do a search for photo projects on Flickr. I'll let you do some more searching if you're still interested. :)

Love

photo by Moon Ko

Happy Anniversary Wrap-up!

What? You're still here?
The giveaways are over.
We ran out of cupcakes last night.
We're pretty sure the guests have all gone home to rest up for Monday.
(hint: you're going to want to charge your camera battery Sunday evening!)

But since you're here...

1. Please download and enjoy a dozen go-to sketches from the team! We love sketches.

[download sketches]

2. Our survey will remain open until Sunday evening. It takes less than ten minutes of your time, and we'd love to hear from you! All answers are anonymously recorded, and your thoughtful feedback will provide us with invaluable information.

 

Click here to take survey

We can't thank you enough for your loyal support this past year. 

Sincerely,
The Team at Write.Click.Scrapbook.

and the printer goes to . . .

Epson was the icing on our cupcake. We couldn't be more grateful to them and to all our giveaway sponsors for helping our anniversary celebration be amazing! Thank you.

Congratulations goes to

 

Hooray Denise! We are so happy to be a part of something amazing and unbelievable. Oh, hey wait, that describes every day here at Write. Click. Scrapbook.!

Please email us your contact information to writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com! Thank you thank you!