Instagram 365 Challenge Week 1 Round Up :)

A resolution of mine this year is that in addition to showing my regular business/work portraits, I’m also going to attempt to do a 365 of my “real life” images as well… I want to challenge myself to create good portraits with no special props, locations or photoshopping.

When I started this on Jan. 1, some friends and followers asked if they too could join in and I thought it would be fun. The one basic rule is it’s a photograph a day, describing your life, taken with a camera phone.

I’m not going to feel like a failure if I don’t get all 365 and you shouldn’t either. I think it would be a huge win just to document ALMOST everyday for a year. That would be about a 300 day improvement over last year so I figure it’s still a huge step in the right direction!

Jan. 1, 2015

Re-Entry.

This photo was taken as we touched down back in Los Angeles after our nice vacation in South Florida (see our vacation photos here).  1/365

Jan. 2, 2015

Resolve.

A New Years Resolution of mine is the classic cliché: exercise more, get in shape… When possible, I’m making my boys participate with me because exercise and being outdoors seems to help them focus and behave better the rest of the day. So this morning, the boys and I went for a mile run just after the sun came up. Felt good! 2/365

Jan. 3, 2015

The Challenger.

What can I say? I love my kids equally, but while they may look similar and share the same due date, albeit five years apart, these boys are as different as night and day. The younger one has made it his mission in life to challenge his older brother in every way: sometimes it’s cute, sometimes it’s a positive, but sometimes it’s a real and destructive challenge to manage. 3/365

Jan. 4, 2015

Failure.

I was never going to be a sports mom. I played plenty of sports in my youth, but frankly, I felt no compelling need to put my kids in a sport, especially not in a competitive sense. Then my boys told me they wanted to play baseball last year. And not just recreational baseball but intense, time-consuming year-round baseball. And, as usual, my kids were right and I was wrong. They are learning things playing sports they could never learn otherwise. Right now, we are learning about facing our fears of failure in a very public way. My youngest is a good player, playing “up” with older, more experienced kids. He still doesn’t weigh 50 lbs and it’s scary and intimidating facing talented kid pitchers. He wants to be perfect and worries endlessly about strike outs and ground outs at first base, beating himself up terribly when it happens, which is relatively often. Sometimes he gets so worked up he feels sick to his stomach before he goes up to bat. But he is a tenacious little bugger and he keeps working at it, keeps wanting to practice. I know he’s going to figure this out. Failure isn’t the problem, fear of failure is. 4/365

Jan. 5, 2015

Stalker.

Because when I spy through the gap in the door, I get to hear all your pretend conversations without interruption. 5/365

Jan. 6, 2015

Keeping It Real (Sometimes).

And this is why it matters… Non-posed, non-propped, non-photoshopped photos of our families are documents that tell us where we lived, who we were, and why we mattered.Shown, from left to right: my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my great aunt (sister of my grandma), my great uncles (brothers of my grandfather), and my 3rd cousin (?) daughter of my great aunt and uncle, double cousin of my mother, on their farm, circa 1949. 6/365

Jan. 7, 2015

Mind Games.

In the mornings before school, sometimes we play chess. I’m not a good chess player, but he’s seven and it’s frustrating that I haven’t won a game since around Thanksgiving :/ 7/365

#JD 365 Image Pool Spotlights

In addition to my own 365 project, I want to include some lovely moments from others “playing along” and adding their work to the community under the hashtag #JD365Project. Please be sure to give them some love and consider adding YOUR best “everyday” images captured with your camera phone (only) to our image pool. It’s NEVER too late to join.

© Image from Irfan Cheema, you can follow him at: instagram.com/irfancheema

© Image from Claudia, you can follow at: instagram.com/cosibella

© Image from Rebecca Grabek, you can follow at:  instagram.com/vlilacskyphotography

© Image from Judith Krasinski, you can follow her at:  instagram.com/yellowlabrador100

© Image from Effie Lissitsas, you can follow at: instagram.com/merryfieldsphoto

© Image from Nat Windsor, you can follow at: instagram.com/natwindsorphoto

© Image from Christy Dunn, you can follow at: instagram.com/christydunn

© Image from Laura Zimmerman, you can follow at: instagram.com/laurazim

© Image from Christy Dunn, you can follow at: instagram.com/vanestle