Day 365

     Happy New Year's Eve!
     I wanted to get this one up in honor of the last day. I know I've been awful at keeping upon posting pictures every day, but my plan is to use the next 6 months to catch up on putting them up, so keep an eye out!
     I can't believe it's been a year! I hope I've improved! Thanks for sticking with me!

Day 317

      The golden delicious days of autumn are over. We've passed the first snow so the crunchy leaves become flattened like a soggy layer of paper. Any fruits left over shrivel and harden. The mountains are kissed with snow and sun, barren trunks decorate the slopes.

Day 131

     Forecast said that it would rain today. Nope, it snowed all day! An unexpected spring surprise!

Day 84

      Strange weather today. Snowy, rainy, slushy, cloudy, snowy, sleety, rainy, sunny.

Day 71

     The original plan was to go ice fishing this morning. Something I've never done, and another thing to add to my list of cool things that I've done. But there weren't enough crazy people around that were willing to leave at 3:30 in the morning to go have some fun. So it got cancelled.
     Though I hate complaining, I was doing just that to dear Lynn. And she saved me from my now ridiculously boring Saturday I had planned. She invited me to go snowmobiling. No, I had never done it. Yes, it was cool. No, I had nothing better to do. So I forsook catching up on any work for a long ride up the canyon.
     It was amazing. AMAZING. I had so much fun, rocketing at 60 miles an hour down some of the most beautiful forests that I have ever seen. Definitely something I want to do again. And with my family. The earth is beautiful in its slumber.

Day 61

     Geez, who ever thought a year could be so long?! Only a couple months in, but feels like I've been working on this forever! And, I need to be better at posting the picture every day.
     Today I just walked. I didn't really focus on photography, but I had a nice time just walking around town, just me and my baby.

Day 58

     For some reason, I have had a weird obsession with trees lately. Maybe because the snow melting and dripping off of the waxy needles caught my attention!

Day 57

     Really in the mood for portraits today...

Day 56

     Since we've been having a warm streak (45 °F), I decided to wear sandals again to day. As soon as I opened my door, I had to turn around and change into my boots and grab my camera. We had gotten dumped on! And it was gorgeous. I didn't get to take many pictures, as I was running between classes and it was melted by the time I was out. I did snap a few, and to spice them up, I decided to add a couple fun elements to a fairly plain picture. I love winter. 

Day 51

     It sure is beautiful up here. Our dad took us on a wonderful drive through the mountains.

Day 47

     Weirdest weather today. Windy by day, sleet-y by night. I was planning on doing a shoot today, but I kind of gave up in the face of the wind. Dang it though, I should have done it. Might've made for some fun results. Now I know, you NEVER back down because of the weather. When he's being unkind, you just smile and prove to him that you are awesome. I really wish the wind would kick up again.
     And now we've got some sleet. Hmmm. Not really feeling the photo jive. But that's why I gotta keep trying.

Day 39

     Every day I look at these mountains, see the trees dusted in snow. I want so badly to climb up. There's gotta be something magical there.

Day 12

     A refreshing day of health beginning to return...at long last. But that means I have to go to school tomorrow...

Day 10

     I don't know what's wrong with me. I am sick again, condemned to my bed for most of the day. Going to class was a poor decision, but also meant that I got to go outside to this.
     Every time I look at mountains with clouds hanging over them, I realized today that I always think of Ansel Adams. Of course you know who he is. He is the guy you think of anytime the subject of landscape photography is mentioned. But even he did some darkroom editing to create his famous mountain images. So I decided to give it a shot. Playing around with the dodge and burn tools, I found that there is a lot more freedom in an image. I'd used them before, but not so meticulously. These tools should be a photographer's best friend.

Day 3

     It's been a busy and beautiful day! My last before I head back to school, sadly enough. It was warm enough for the snow to keep melting but cold enough for icicles to form and breath to appear. The air was clean and fresh, and believe it or not, I heard birds singing! Sure enough, a crowd of eastern bluebirds swirled in the trees around me. Such a beautiful afternoon. I saw and felt many wonderful things, and I wish that I could capture them all into a photograph to share.

Day 1

     Today I really struggled. It's the first of a series, so I have to make a good impression, right? So the pressure was on.

     Of course, I wanted something "new" for New Year's Day, so I spent a while brainstorming on what kind of things I could artistically represent that were new. I am new and different than last year, but I have enough self-portraits to fill a museum, due to my lack of models. The year (obviously) is new, but that idea didn't even occur to me until now (duh, Ali). The snow outside was new and untouched, so I headed outside, to find me feeling much better.

     Snow is hard to represent photographically. Snow ruins pictures, it throws off the color and contrast of an image, and I had almost forgotten that it is nearly impossible to get a good picture of snow. But I remembered it pretty quickly. The world outside on the first day was incredibly beautiful, but only to my eyes. All my camera saw was stark whiteness. So I was reduced to finding something to do with the snow to try and demonstrate new. I was so focused on making a creative, touching image of the snow, that I was stuck within a photographer's block. I was trying so hard that I killed creativity.

     And then I turned around to see my gloves that I had left in the snow. And there was my image. Nothing new, just something clean and wintry and simple. And just that easily, I found a mood that pretty accurately represents my attitude today. And I learned with that, that creativity isn't created, it is discovered. All creativity is is how we see the world around us.

Happy New Years. And happy Winter.