I'm still here ...

... just having a bit of technical difficulty. The good news is that I'm still constantly taking pictures - almost exclusively with my handy, dandy iPhone. The bad news is that 5 years of this silly photo-a-day project means that my laptop is FULL. To. the. gills. It gives me the stink eye each time I hook my phone up to upload the latest pictures.

I'm in the process of backing up (both on an external hard drive - 2 actually AND burning my pictures to discs) so I can delete them off my laptop & save some space. It turns out that backing up some 25,000 pictures is quite a lengthy process, and it leaves me with not much time to play on the innnernets, let alone update this blog.

I hope to get the pictures updated in the next few weeks. Keep coming back. Summer is just around the corner, and I should have much more time to stay updated once my job slows down.

13,491

Another successful year in my daily photo project. I had more pictures this year than the last 3 years, and I know why! A full year with my iPhone, Instagram, family pictures for some of my friends, lots of traveling, Ellen & Georgia, and a goal to become a better photographer.

I plan to continue this project for the fifth year ... I love the challenge of finding something to photograph each and every day. It's becoming harder and harder to pick a favorite picture to share on the blog, but that's a nice problem to have. I'll update the banner soon ... I'm doing good at this point just to have my photos uploaded from the holidays.

Add my site to your favorites, and continue to come back and see my daily photos. Thanks for all your encouragement and positive words when it comes to my photographs ... it all means the world to me!

Had a hard time picking today's picture ...

... check out a some other favorites on my other blog! Who needs winter anyway?

Thank you, Pinterest

Make your own!

So far it's turning out to be an Instagram daily photo blog.

10,553

Here we are! Gearing up for year FOUR of this silly, little, photo blog. I can't wait to get started. It's going to be a challenge. I'm going to push myself. This blog allows me to carve out a piece of each day for time for me to be creative.

I took 10,553 pictures this year. I was surprised that when I totaled up the months, it was only 219 more pictures than I took in 2010. The summer months were HUGE when it came to photography. I had a trip to Carmel and a trip to Denver. I got my iPhone in October, which made photography more accessible for me. I can actually say that since I got my iPhone, I've picked up my DSLR only a handful of times, and I don't think I've even turned on my Point & Shoot, which used to be the camera I used most days. The pictures on my phone are SO clear, and SO easy to take! If you aren't an iPhone person, I would HIGHLY suggest one if you're in the market for a new phone!

Many of my pictures come from the Instagram app, which happens to be free. For the amount that I use it, I think it would be worth paying for! If you scroll down a bit and look along the right-hand side of the blog, you can now see more of my Instagram pictures. This updates every 10 minutes, so you can see them as I'm taking them throughout the day. If YOU are on Instagram, you can click the "Follow Me" link to follow me (duh) in the app. You'll also find my Pinterest "Follow Me" button for those of you that are a part of the Pinterest party. It's fun, isn't it?

The other update for year four is the URL address. I finally decided to purchase my own domain. IT is still run through Google's Blogger, but the website has changed from www.theviewacrosstown.blogspot.com TO www.theviewacrosstown.com. If you go to the old site, it should connect you to my new address ... but you may want to update your favorites or links in your blog rolls just to be safe. You'll also find newly added "share" buttons below each post if you'd like to share one of my pictures with your Twitter or Facebook followers! How cool is that?

I can't wait to continue this project for year four ... I hope you'll join me along my journey!

So easy, even I could do it!

You, too, can get this 'do!

10,334

Here we go! I'm ready for year 3 of my Daily Photo Blog. I can't believe I've successfully completed 2 years of posting a new photo every day! In 2010, I took 10,334 pictures. Many were deleted, but that's part of practicing. Not every picture will be good, and even if they turned out, I may not want to keep them.

It's hard to get out in the winter to shoot pictures. Often, I just go from home to school and back and there isn't much happening to shoot. Clearly, January and February show that. When the weather gets nice, I go outside more. A trip to NYC happened in May, and that was the first month I had ever shot that many pictures. 550+ in just 2 days will do that! I got my new camera in July. I definitely picked up my pace then, because I wanted to practice with all the settings. Then, I can tell that work started to get busy in November, when my numbers went down.

I also started with the Daily Shoot challenges early in the year. 158 of my photos this year followed the challenges they gave. I had to ask Jill or friends on Twitter exactly what some of the challenges meant. I also had to google or look at other photographer's shots to see exactly how to go about my shooting. While those days were hard, that means that I learned something new that day!

I'm excited to start this challenge for the third year. I've set a few personal goals for myself as a photographer for 2011. I think the fact that I'm calling myself a photographer now is a big step. It's not my full-time job, but it's something that I love doing in my free time ... and I MAKE free time to do this! That's the best part!

Thanks for joining me on this journey. I'd like to see more feedback from my readers this year. That is MY challenge for YOU! Is there something else you'd like me to share? More information? Less? Do you like the feedback buttons under the pictures? I recently added the "You Might Also Like..." links to send you to other photos. Do you like or hate that?

I haven't started shooting yet in 2011 ... I better get a move on!

[Update: The new banner shows the 4 digital cameras I've had. I wanted to include cameras from before, but couldn't remember what kind they were. I also picked a new font in the banner which is conveniently called, Oh {Photo} Shoot!]

MIA in NYC

I've got a problem.

I can't leave my laptop.

But I have to.

I've been doing this daily blog for about 18 months, only with a few pauses due to traveling or a broken camera.

This time it will be because of traveling. In about 2 hours I'll be in the air on my way to New York, City for my cousin's wedding.

I'm very excited! And also super excited about the amount of pictures I'll be taking.

But sad I can't share with you each day.

I promise when I get back on Sunday, I'll share my favorite pictures from Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday! Until then ...

Photo Walk #2 was a success!

I think we should make this a monthly event. Who else wants to join us?

Look forward to more pictures on the other blog soon :)

Project 365

I'm only 4 days into year two of this blog and I'm finding new ways to approach it. On Twitter, I started to see that a lot of the people I was following were talking about a 2010/365 project. When I started to pay attention to what they were saying, I realized they were talking about a daily photo blog.

"I'm already doing that!"

How could I change it? Well, now I'm following a lot of people who are also doing a photo-a-day. I've put some links on the right side and I hope to find more that are interesting to share with you. Several people are just posting their photo of the day to their flickr page or uploading it to Twitter. I'm trying to give links to blogs or pages that have compiled all these pictures.

The other thing I'm doing is following someone new on Twitter, @dailyshoot. I'm SO glad I found them, but sorry that I didn't know about it before this week. @dailyshoot is someone that gives an assignment each day. Once you do that, they ask you to pick your best picture, upload it with the correct label (#ds) and then they will compile those pictures on a site each day (http://dailyshoot.com/) While I know I will often find things on my own to take pictures of, the assignment has been nice AND a challenge for me. It also makes me look at things differently & try new things ... which is the whole reason for my blog in the first place!

I'm planning on posting the assignment for the day under a photo, if that's the one I choose to post. I may not always be able to do that day's assignment, but I thought you might like to see the reason behind why I shot that. Up until now, I just posted things that happened to do with my daily life, but now they may not have a meaning. I will also put a label of #ds on that photo, so you can look back into my other assignments if you wish.

The other thing I wanted to share was a great article about starting a 365 project. I try to keep this blog strictly pictures, so if I got all this explanation out of the way now, that would help.

It's called "How to Take a Photo a Day and See Your Life in a Whole New Way":

People will often say that their whole lives flashed before their eyes after they experienced a traumatic event. Perhaps it’s a bit morbid, but we think that sounds pretty incredible.

When Taylor McKnight started taking a photo a day on January 1st, 2004, he never imagined the project would not only serve as a way to remember a year, but also help him understand what was important to him in his life.

Whether it was his relationships, his career, or his fashion sense, recording a photo a day for a whole year left him with a rich visual history of his life. And it made him a better photographer to boot!

Now that he’s in the middle of doing it for a second time, we asked Taylor to write about it for us. Read on for our tutorial on how and why to create your own daily photographic history.

WHY DO IT?

Taking a photo a day is a big undertaking with big payoffs. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider doing it:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)

• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.

• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

TIPS ON HOW TO DO IT

Here are six tips on how to create your own Project 365:

1. Bring Your Camera Everywhere
   Yes, everywhere. Get in the habit. Grocery stores, restaurants, parties, work, and school. Going to a movie theatre? Snap a pic of the flick with your phone–there are photo-ops everywhere. If you have one of those tiny tiny cameras, you have no excuse not to have it in your pocket all the time. And if you don’t? Camera phones are a great substitute.

2. Make Posting Easy
   You can install blog software like Movable Type or Wordpress on your own site and create an entry for each photo, but for true ease of use, try a photo sharing site. Flickr will let you post a week’s worth of photos in 2 minutes flat, and fotolog and Photoblog.com are geared toward a photo-a-day workflow. Making it fast and easy means you’re much more likely to do it.

3. Vary Your Themes
   Try to capture the day’s events in a single photo. Perform photographic experiments. Take a photo of someone new you meet, something you ate for the first time, or something you just learned how to do. Take a photo of something that made you smile. And don’t forget to take a photo of yourself at least once a month so you can remember how you’ve changed, too.

4. Tell a Story
   Use your blog entry, or your photo description, to explain what’s going on in each day’s photograph. How good did that dinner taste? What made you want to take a photo of that stranger? It’ll help you remember down the road, and it gives friends following along a better appreciation of why you took the photo you did. You don’t need to write a lot, just enough to add some color.

5. Don’t Stop, No Matter What
   This is perhaps the most important tip of all. You will get tired of taking a photo every single day. Some days, you will consider giving up. Don’t. The end result is worth the effort. Remind yourself why you wanted to do it in first place.

   There will be times you’ll think there’s nothing interesting left to take a photo of, and times you’ll think you didn’t do anything exciting enough to take a photo of. There’s always a great photo to be made.

   Get out of the house and take a walk. Or stay inside and look around. Take a photo of something important to you. Take a photo of the inside of your house so you can see how your taste has changed over the years. Take a photo of anything, just don’t stop.

   N.b. It helps if you’ve told your friends about the project and asked them to follow along. Their encouragement will keep you going!

6. Post early, post often
   Plan on going through and posting your photos at least once a week so you don’t get backlogged and feel overwhelmed. Ideally, post every day or two. Again, spend the time up front to make sure it’s quick and easy to post. It’ll make all the difference.

I think it's also interesting that the article is about someone with the same name as mine! Maybe we are related!

As a reward for completing the first year of this blog, I splurged on getting my favorite photos from each month turned into a photo flip book. Snapfish tells me they will be here in a few days ... I'm really excited!

Maybe I can even inspire YOU to start with a 365 project! We're just a few days in, so you could start now. I hope by sharing this information you will understand why I'm doing it and hopefully not look at me like I'm a crazy person when I pull my camera out of my purse to take a picture of a shadow, or a tree, or your pet, or food!

The daily photo blog continues ... starting today!

Getting the word out!

I feel like I'm kind of "cheating" by using this for my photo of the day, but I wanted to spread the word about Ellen's entry in the KC Star - Best Dressed Halloween Costume contest!

Check out my blog for more info!

Resolution Failed

Betsy = A sad girl

I use my lovely Canon EVERY.SINGLE.DAY to take pictures (obviously ... duh!) and tonight as I was getting ready to take a picture of my pretty asparagus, a not-so-pretty message popped up on my camera.

"lens error, restart camera"

Huh? What? How can there be an error? I take my camera out of its padded case & it's snug pocket on my purse once a day to take pictures for this blog. Then, I put it back safely & tuck it away for the night. Last year, I had a camera debacle when I dropped my camera during a classroom activity and had to beg, borrow & steal to get a new one in November.

I've done all the "quick fix" suggestions I found online. Turning off & on several times didn't work. Putting a new battery in didn't work. Plugging into USB didn't work. So ... I broke down ... then called Canon customer service. I'll be sending my camera off tomorrow to hopefully be fixed. Once they realize I didn't drop this camera, didn't get water in my camera & didn't let sand infiltrate my camera, they SHOULD fix it since it's under warranty.

Please cross your fingers for me!

Jill has been nice enough to let me borrow her point and shoot for a few days/weeks while mine is off at the camera hospital. I'll try & keep up with the photo blog with the help of her camera, but I might not have pics for the next few days :(

My two new favorite blogs

After I found these blogs today, I spent the rest of the day reading through them. Both women are amazing photographers, have beautiful houses (with tips for making your house just as great), and are crafty (which I love)!

Check them out ... .. .

Whatever: http://megduerksen.typepad.com/whatever/

Clover Lane: http://memoriesoncloverlane.blogspot.com/