Another Year?
I feel like, instead of July 1st, it’s January 1st. Just as if yesterday were New Year’s Eve, Jens and I celebrated. I made a lemon torte, and we popped up bottles of our favorite beverages – ginger ale for me, tonic water for Jens. We clinked glasses and exchanged cheers as our computer displayed “Upload Complete!” After we added our photos to the group, I lit the 3-6-5 candles I’d put on the cake and we blew them out together.
Another year of 365 self-portraits was complete!
After I was sure that the card wasn’t going to fail before I could get the photo off or that the computer wasn’t going to blow up before the photo got uploaded, I finally went to check out the “Congratulations Keitha and Jens” group that my awesome friends had put together on flickr. Fifteen people joined the group, and Ben (luzartphotography), Jan (Rosember), Thorsten (TheBrumReaper), Betsy (betsypdx), Mike Autry (mikeautry1) and Laree (lareecb) even made congratulatory photos for us! It really made the moment special for both of us.
Of course, we only had the one computer to use since my laptop died, so we were both vying for computer time to get our thank yous and to post our stats, and Jens was supposed to be reading a student’s thesis, so, yeah.
But then luckily today I got my new computer! It has a dual core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, a terabyte worth of space…Can you believe that most of the photos I processed and posted in the last 3 months were done on a machine with only 512 MB of RAM? I usually sat down to process with a book, because I could read about 5 pages while waiting for a photo to load enough for me to edit.
Of course with any new computer comes all the lovely software installs. We bought one with no operating system since Jens had bought me an English version of Windows XP earlier in the year, so I had to install that (and it takes a long while to format a TB) and then find the CD with the proper drivers for the PCI slot (it was hidden in a guide for the monitor) and finally, I was online. Then I had to install iTunes and Lightroom and download Chrome and Filezilla and Irfanview and .NET 2.0 and Winrar and Dipstych and….
And then I still had to decide whether I wanted to do a third year of 365 days. Last time, I took a month off between projects, but part of me wishes I had gone non-stop. And of course once you miss one day, you can never go back.
So of course I took a self-portrait today. Last year, a friend suggested that I take two shots every day, one a self-portrait and another “matching” shot. I’ve interpreted his “matching” to be something in the same tone or processed the same or a piece of the scene. At any rate, I think I’m going to give it a go. I don’t want to necessarily commit to doing 365 days worth, but I’m going to give it a try!
And now….
Day 1.
July 2nd, 200912:44 pm at
Hello Keitha!
I’ve been following your 365 days for most part of the last year. I can only say that it’s inspiring to follow and to see where hard work can get you.
I have been kind of wondering if you would start another year or not. And I must say I’m glad you intend to try! :) I’ve watched this and the second day on Flickr and what can I say? Well, it’s a most promising start and I look forward to what’s coming next!
Take care! And have fun!! ;)
// Matts