goodbye 2010

A Belated Merry Christmas, and Happy 2011!
I can't believe how quickly December came and went (the whole year, actually)! I stayed busy with lots of little projects (I can't believe I got so many of them finished), and I even had some extra time to enjoy the season :)
One thing I had on Cory's gift list was a calendar. I've done a custom one through Costco every year since 2006 except for last year, I just didn't get all the pictures rounded up, and I promised myself that I wouldn't let that happen again this year. I went through every folder in our 2010 archives and picked some of my favorites for the cover...I had a hard time choosing just a couple, this is how it turned out:

I didn't want to use the photos from my photo-a-day/p365 project because I wanted it to highlight all the memories; it's like our yearbook. I cropped all the images into squares and used the collage tool in Picasa. I love the way it turned out, and so does Cory. When he saw it he exclaimed "this is everything we did!" and requested that we get a poster print made. I'm thinking I'm going to have to do this for the cover every year now, and that's okay with me. It did take a little bit of time, but I think it's totally worth it.

My next project is to do something with all my p365 photos. I made it through most of 2009, and I've done a better job with 2010, and I plan on continuing into 2011. I've already decided on ordering books, I'm just having a hard time with [not quite] 365 images per year that are both horizontal and vertical, and have a chronological order...I don't want too-too many pages in the book, or too much white space, and I also want to have the date & caption in there somehow. I just need to do something, sooner rather than later.

Another daunting project is to get all picture folders from all computers and hard drives organized onto one master external hard drive. So all of everything is in [at least] one place, not scattered around in 4 or 5 different spots (recently, it's taken a little bit of digging to find certain things I've been looking for). Let me explain the problem: I don't want to file a folder away in the archives until I've run it through my workflow and deleted the bad and edited the good and it's ready to be filed away...I just never get to that part, I have no "flow!" All of our pictures end up in the "dump folder" (literally, that's what it's called), and that's where they stay, all ten-thousand + of them over the last 15 months or so (seriously).

Going through all the folders in the "dump folder" in search of some of my faves for my collage reminded me of just how busy we were this past year, and how many stories went untold in 2010 (I know there is still a big two week trip across the pond in there too). I'm not going to say that I'm going to dig into the old ones and try to play catch-up, but I will try to do a better job going forward.
We did print a few B&W 12 x 18's from our trip (added film grain & contrast):


We have all this fun & fancy camera equipment, and we aren't doing a whole lot with our photography. I want this to change in the new year! I'm feeling really motivated to get some of these time-consuming photo projects crossed off my list (before it gets really carried away and I get waaaay too far behind).

Wow!! This was basically a real wordy post explaining/complaining (?) about how I've got my work cut out for me! I think I'll be doing some editing & organizing this weekend!