Happy new year everyone! Just a quick post today about resolutions.

I know, I hate them too.

I don’t hate them actually. I hate myself for failing to keep them. And so, in turn, I hate them.

But there is one new years resolution that I actually kept, and so I always remember it fondly. In 2007, I made a resolution to take one picture every day and post it to my blog. That blog doesn’t exist anymore, but the pictures do and I’m so glad I have that record. It was hard, but I can honestly say that doing that 365 project was the single biggest thing that improved my photography, more than anything else. You know what they say about practice. Well it really is true.

Here are four of my favorite images from the beginning of my project.

Here are four of my favorites from the end of my project.

As you can see, not only did I learn about light and all that stuff, but I also decided what was important to me that I wanted to focus on photographing.  (my kids)  :)

These days, it’s so much easier to do a 365 picture-a-day project with phones making it simple because you always have a camera ready at your disposal. This last year, I did a 365 project without even half trying using the free app called Project 365.

In fact, the iphone has made doing a picture a day so simple that I plan to keep doing it and I know it’s one resolution that will be easy to keep.

This is how I’m going to be doing 365 pictures in 2013:

I will be using the Project 365 app again because it’s so easy (and did I mention free?) and it keeps it all organized for you.

I will be doing the Project Life 365 challenge from Design Aglow. (@projectlife365 on instagram) They will give daily prompts and challenges, which can be helpful when you get in a rut with your pictures and are running low on inspiration. You simply add your photo on instagram and then add the hashtag #projectlife365 as well as the hashtag for the day. The first week of hashtags looks like this: #resolution, #you_today, #optimistic, #graceful, #view, #still_life, and #simplicity.  If you want to sign up for projectlife365, go here.

At the end of the year I will be putting together a book of my photos. I might use blurb again because they are affordable and easy and their quality is good. (I used them to print my photos from the 2007 project)  Or I might just try out a different album company I’ve never tried before. (any recommendations?)

If you want to join in, I’d love company! Follow me on instagram (@jodipfunder) and play along by tagging your daily picture #purdue365. I’m excited to see what you have to share!

13 is going to be a very lucky year. I can feel it.

UPDATE: When January 1st rolled around, I tried to re-use my project 365 app and realized that the only way to use it for a second year is to replace the photos I have in there from last year. So I looked around for a different app to use and found Collect: Photo a Day, which I actually like even more than Project 365!  Features I like about it: it is easy to use and keep photos organized, just like 365. But I like the look of it better because it keeps all the photos from one month on the screen together so you can see a whole month at once (personal preference; I just like that). Plus, it has the option of adding different albums, so you could do different 365 projects for different subjects (I might just do an album for each of my kids and have 365 portraits of each of them!) which means I can keep using this from one year to the next and just add a different album for each year. Also, the 365 app didn’t allow you to delete photos, just replace them (big complaint from a lot of users) and Collect allows you to delete. So, Collect is what I’m going to use in 2013 for my 365 iphone pictures.

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