Ah 2008, how fast you came, though honestly, not fast enough. 2007 really kicked our family in the ass. We dealt with hostal employers, cross country moves, selling houses we loved, to many weird & unexplained serious illnesses, to many hospital visits and floods (from a small stream in my bacement to a standing lake in Allison’s house). There were also good things. My best friend had her first baby this year, a lovely little boy named Gavin, & my niece turned 1.

I don’t make New Years Resolutions. I think they are just a way of making ourselves feel like jerks 1/2 way through the year. I do make promises to myself because these are selfish and just for me. I am promising myself that I will take more pictures & feel like less of a weirdo when they are in public places. I also promise myself that I will stop being so negative.  I’m usually such a happy person and yes this year kicked my ass, but I’m ok. I’m better than this. I promise myself that Matt and I will buy a new house by the year end. I promise to finally quit smoking for good & stay quit. It’s time. I promise to go to weight watchers because I’ve been doing so well at loosing weight by myself I really want to get back to my weight when I got married (almost 5 years ago!).

Finally, I promise myself to finally stop feeling embaressed or inadiquate when people compliment me or what I have done. I will stop making excuses why what I have done isn’t really as good as they think it is. One thing made me realize this fact this weekend. I took a picture of my niece at the beach. A random snap shot in my mind. The reaction I got from my family & how I reacted to their reaction really made me think.

I had printed this out small sized at target. Nothing special I thought. Well it turns out that this is a spectacular picture in real media. The computer kind of washes out the subtle greys of the sand. That ray of sunshine cutting through the middle of the picture (the one I tried for a hour unsucessfully to edit out) is stunning in real life. It looks like the sun has come down to light up my niece.  In reality this is a picture that I probably would have liked & been silent about. It’s probably nothing I would have ever shown anyone if I didn’t figure out how to print off my pictures on flickr through target.

My husband said “This is GALLERY quality”, my Sister in Law said “If you don’t enter this into SOMETHING I’m going to kick your ass”, my Mother in Law tried to steal a copy after saying “I NEED THIS”, & my father in law just stared at it which is probably the best compliment you could get from that man.

In case your wondering I shot this at Ventura Pier on my Canon XDI in “P” mode no flash attatched, auto focus. I was kind of running/stumbling so I didn’t have time to really adjust anything. I cropped the bottom a bit and turned this into a black & white photo via photo shop, the black & white setting was “Urban Snapshot” then I increased the contrast, played down the red tones & upped the blue tones. I rarely edit anything beyond a crop so this was unusual for me.