Here is the cake that my wife made to celebrate the occasion. My daughter gave me 1 Smartie for every day and a note saying Dad, 365 days Smartier

Stick with me; I am pretty sure I’ll be back at it in a week

PS One confession I started this project on 2/15/2010 (Day 1) and finished on 2/21/2011 (Day 366). You do the math because obviously I can’t.

With my new church calling I was at the church for 10 hours Sunday, and was beat when I got home. I just wanted to veg out for a while so we watched the Karate Kid. This is my kids thinking they are masters now. I know it is not the greatest picture, but it is what it is.

PS Ward Clerk

The original plan for this post was to list everything I learned and have gotten out of my 365. I started realized I needed to face the facts that if I ever wanted to get the post up I would have to scrap that plan. There literally is too much, I have learned so much about my camera, about lighting, and photography in general. I have acquired gear lenses, light, cases, modifiers etc, but most importantly I have acquired friends that I probably would have missed out on had I not done this. It has been a truly great experience that I have loved through the good, the bad and the disappointing.

She is not goal oriented she is goal obsessed. Straight A’s, heaven forbid missing a day of school much less be late, I think she is trying to finish all of her personal progress goals in the first year. If she sees it as worthy then she will go after it no-holds-barred.
Talent just flow from her. She definitively has a better grasp on photography composition than I do. Music, math abstract thinking all just natural.
Kindness is her only option (with everyone but her brothers ). We had an experience with some of her school “friends” recently. She was invited to work on a sceince fair project with a group. After many hours (and I mean days) when it came time to present the other girls had made a other project and left her out in the cold on her own. The next day though as Christy was picking her up from school there she was helping one of these girls carry all of her stuff to her car. She said “It’s just easier to let it go and be nice.”
She is smart and proud of it.
Anyway, I think she is great and I really mean that.

I don’t know why I think this shot sums up her character, but somehow in my head it does.

1. Remember it’s for YOU.  This is to help you.  Sure we all want that our pictures inspire or help someone else, but, at the end of the day, the one benefiting most from your daily posts is you.

2. Take a picture.  Try to make it nice, try to make it meaningful, try to make it perfect.  However, there are days that these things might not come together, and that is what tomorrow, next week, even next month is for.

3. Ignore the numbers.  This is very hard for me I love tech and tracking, but the hardest times on my 365 was when I suddenly had double the visitors and still no comments.  If I had not known that more people were visiting I would not have been so frustrated.

4.  Take time to look back.  The biggest boost you can get when you are down about the challenge is to go back and look some of you past posts.  You might be reminded of a good time that would have been forgotten, inspired to recreate a new look at a different shot, or see just how far you’ve come.

5.  Share yourself, ask for help, give help.

6. Last but not least; have a camera with you always, DSLR, point and shoot, phone, it doesn’t matter have the camera with you and use it.

Did I leave anything out??? Leave a comment let me know.

By the way which is better top or bottom (100% crop of above)