Why Sue's Doin' It

See that picture on the sidebar? That's the only photo in existence of my entire family. My dad died when my little brother was two and, in the 70s, farm families with 6 kids didn't dilly dally with hifalutin' notions of posterity.

Fast forward 38 years: here I am in my mid-40s. I have one child, a 5-year-old daughter, of whom I always take the same damn picture: a centred close-up that tries to capture her eyes. She's about all I take pictures of too, even though I own a Canon Rebel XS with a 50mm (1:1.8) lens.

I'm a person of words, not images, and I want to decrease the dominance of one over the other. My mind is always tripping over words and, too often, the words carry me forward before I've had a chance to linger in the place my mind needs to be. The result is inattentiveness, an inability to concentrate on the task at hand. I'm also someone whose memory has been compromised in the last few years by disease, and I want to see if I can slow down the pace of memory loss by consciously trying to change the way I see and interact with the world. I want to be observant. I want to linger. I want to reflect.

And so, I have taken up the challenge of Project 365: one photo a day for a year. This blog will feature the photos, uploaded daily, or sometimes, weekly. Most posts will be nothing more than an image, because I really do want to step back from my need to over-explain. I will, however, talk about what I've learned about photography here and there along the way.

I've got a rag-tag band of friends joining me on this journey and I hope we share some laughs and insights as we try to keep each other going.