Fire on a winter evening.

I may be headed for a train wreck, or at least another large public failure. I’ve noticed recently that I have really slacked off taking photos. I still have a few regular things I’m doing, but the maniacal, camera-always-in-hand behavior has been tapering steeply away. So, when Darren mentioned to me yesterday that he was joining a Project 365 group on flickr, I knew right away that I needed that, too. This is a group where one takes one picture and posts it every day for a year. It might sound easy, but it’s a tall order. I know there will be many, many days where I won’t feel inspired or energetic enough to shoot, process and post.

So today Darren sent me the link to the particular group he had in mind (there are several on flickr and elsewhere), and I joined. And being the anal retentive sort, I really wanted to start the project on January 1, so I scrambled to see what I had over the last couple days so that I could catch up and get going. By a stroke of sheer luck, I had something from the first two days of the year.

The first shot above is a totally random shot of the fire at a little New Year’s Eve dinner party of neighborhood parents who were not going to make it to any of the usual hipster spots in SF to celebrate. Ah, parenthood. Thanks Bea and Steve. It was fabulous to be included.

Bottling the 2008 Cabernet

The second shot is from a Sunday afternoon wine making session of our little winemaking group. That’s where Darren told me about his project 365 intentions. Thanks for the tip, Darren! And thanks for trading off corking the bottles; that’s hard on the lower back. Anyway, in this photo Sarah and Ruta’s arm are filling bottles with the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that the group made before we joined.

Telephone Pole and Shopping Carts

Finally, the third shot is from a shoot I did for the albany.patch.com feature I get to do, “Where in Albany…“. I’d tell you more about this particular shot, but I’d end up giving away the answer to this week’s play. I can’t do that until someone has guessed it. All I can say is that I serendipitously ran into my friends Emily and Ken as they were leaving a restaurant and I was wandering the streets looking for inspiration. Ken and I ended up standing there talking for a bit, and after awhile some other people came out of the restaurant. Standing around with a largish camera on a tripod often invites questions (sometimes confrontational ones!) and that’s how I ended meeting a couple other working photographers, including Chris Fuzi.

But I haven’t yet said what the risk in all this is.

It’s this. Once I got home and finished processing some shots, posting my albany.patch shot, and my flickr Project 365 posts, I happened to read an article on Mashable about WordPress putting out a challenge to bloggers to commit to posting everyday (or every week) in 2011.

Well, I can tell you that the drop-off in my blog posts has been bothering me for longer than the drop-off in photographing. So, now I’m committed to blogging everyday. That’s TWO 365 commitments, which is nuts. Because if there is one thing you can count on, it’s that I have no follow through. Naturally, combining the two and posting on the blog about the photo of the day over on flickr has already occurred to me, and this post is essentially the first one to take that approach. But still…

So, there it is. Check in regularly so you know when to start berating me publicly for flaking out!