A New Project Begins

I’ve been blogging for eleven years now. When I started keeping an online journal in 1999, the term “blog” had not yet been coined. When “weblogs” were introduced, they were nothing like they are now: they were literally a log of links people found in their web travels. Sometimes the links would be accompanied by a small editorial. There were no blogging platforms; anyone who wanted to maintain a website had to code it by hand and upload one or several files for every update. Guestbooks and emails were the only way to gather feedback from your readers unless you wanted to code something to collect comments on the entry itself.

The Dawn of a New Day

In the early 2000s, tools like Greymatter and Blogger were introduced to help automate content creation. And thus an era of blogging, more similar to what we are accustomed to today, began. No longer did you have to know how to code or design to run a website; you just needed to have enough technical expertise (or know someone who did) to set up your blogging tool of choice. It seemed like everyone and their dog (literally) had their own personal website. Everyone had a blog so they could make their likes and dislikes known to the world.

I immediately latched onto GreyMatter because who wants to upload three files (index, archive and the entry itself) or manually change the date and next/previous links every time they update? While it was a groundbreaking script, I was not happy with it out-of-the-box, so I joined with others in the community to hack the code and accomplish great things. In time, other blogging scripts were released and I tried MoveableType, pMachine and then ExpressionEngine. Never was I satisfied with the core code provided. Regardless of the platform I was using, I immersed myself in the developer communities and created hacks and plugins galore. My website was personal in nature and chronicled my every day life, but I gained readership because I offered something interspersed in these mundane posts: a way for people to customize their own websites and get their blogging software to accomplish cool, dynamic and interactive site features.

I consider my website from 2001-2006 one of my greatest accomplishments. I learned a lot about coding, community relations and product support. I provided help and information to my readers and was rewarded frequently with praise, though rarely monetarily. I often feel like I was a bit ahead of the times and gave up blogging too soon and for the wrong reasons. Back then very few people blogged for profit and often times they gave freely. If I would have abandoned ExpressionEngine and moved to WordPress (by far the best blogging software today) I could have been part of that developer community. I could have a public blog today with a satisfying readership count and I’d probably be earning a respectable amount through donations and ads.

Website vs. Life

In 2006, I tired of the limelight, so I dissolved my public blog. I didn’t want to spend all of my free time designing my site or releasing and supporting plugins for my blogging tool of choice. I would stay up all too often until 2 or 3am, sometimes all night long, rolling out a new design or debugging code. Mark and I would spend our evenings with our backs turned to one another in our computer chairs. I still felt the need to write and document life and found LiveJournal to be a suitable place to fill that void. It is no coincidence that I actually started living a life around that time. I advanced in my career, strengthened my marriage, lost 80 pounds over the course of two years, became pregnant and gave birth twice. (I’ve archived most of my old LiveJournal entries at digitalwoe.com Yesteryear if you are ever inclined to read them.)

While happy that my days and nights were not spent glued to the computer screen, after a few years I longed for another creative outlet. Writing wasn’t cutting it; though I’ve enjoyed writing creatively all my life, it does not provide me with the same sense of self-satisfaction that accompanies a long-term project.

Discovering Photography as a Creative Outlet

I’ve loved taking photos for as far back as I can remember and possessed a camera of my own since well before puberty hit. When I started digitalwoe in 2001 I went out and bought my first digital camera (a 2.0 megapixel Kodak point and shoot). I discovered how much I like telling stories with photos and sharing that work with others. It took less than a year for me to realize that the point and shoot wasn’t cutting it and I purchased a very expensive Sony Mavica. It did not have interchangeable lenses, but was most like an entry level SLR in other regards. The introduction of Flickr in 2004 fueled my desire to learn photography and share my work with others and by 2006 I saved up enough money to buy a Nikon D50, my current baby.

At the end of 2009, I decided to take another stab at Project 365. I’d tried this and failed two times in the past: In 2007 I tried 365 Days with the goal to take a photo of myself daily. It ended abruptly on day 20 when I found out I was pregnant. I have no idea why that triggered me to fall of the wagon since it would have been cool to document. In 2008 I started Project 365 Kids, focused on taking a picture of Mr. Serious daily. That lasted roughly the same amount of time; I got to day 23 before abandoning it.

In February, my world was rocked when my husband accepted a job in a state 800 miles away. He began within a couple of weeks and left me and the kids behind to wrap things up and prepare for the move. Toward the end of February and all throughout March and April, my photography was sporadic. I originally intended to continue with the project though I was busy, but with Mark being gone, I hit a bout of depression and stress I did not anticipate. I could barely function enough to go to work, pack up the house and take care of the kids. I was not interested in taking photos or much of anything else. When the whole family moved toward the end of March I was busy unpacking, setting up the house and trying to adjust to working remotely as a contractor for the wonderful company who employed me locally for nine years.

I did not want this to be yet another abandoned photo project, so as soon as things settled down, I picked up the camera and resumed daily photography.

Something’s Still Missing…

For the past year, I’ve really missed having a public website. I tried several times to start up a public blog, but I neglected one of the most important aspects of gaining any sort of readership: having something to offer. I’m not a bad writer and I’m an okay photographer, but I’m no dooce or Pioneer Woman. I’d forgotten that with the supersaturation of personal and photo blogs available on the web, one needs to market their blog to a small niche.

I launched this site a few weeks ago to have a public place to house my Project 365 photos, to help keep me motivated and hopefully garner feedback from others learning the craft. That alone is not a unique offering. Why would someone want to come to my site and look at my photos if they didn’t know me? I’ve realized that I want this site to be something more.

This site will focus my efforts to learn and practice digital photography and photo editing and it is my goal to share what I’ve learned in a useful and easy-to-follow manner. While I’ve dreamed about it, I don’t have aspirations to become a professional photographer. In addition to it being a creative outlet, I want to learn photography simply to take awesome pictures of my kids and document my life. I want to help you become a better photographer too, while having fun and not taking yourself too seriously. I want to participate in photo assignments and contests and inspire you to challenge yourself. To a greater extent, the site will be about trying to recapture some creativity while completely bogged down with life’s responsibilities.

What next?

If I said I wasn’t interested in becoming a professional blogger, I’d be lying. That sounds like the coolest job on a planet to me and one I think I’d be good at. This is the start of a personal project, however and I’m not going to jump in head first into ads and sponsorships while having no content and no audience to market to. In fact, I have no plans of putting ads on my site any time soon, if ever and I’m not interested in most of the sponsored posts I’ve seen other bloggers write. What I do want is to build my readership and find other amateur, hobby photographers who want to share in my journey. I want to be inspired, to inspire others and to document my observations.

A Giveaway!?

I’ve decided to host my first photography assignment giveaway. Everyone likes something for free and I have an inspirational prize lined up to help get your creative juices flowing. Come back here the evening of Tuesday, June 2 to see what you could win and learn the assignment. You could also subscribe to my RSS feed to be alerted as soon as the entry goes up.

I hope to see you then! In the meantime, please feel free to take a moment to introduce yourself to me in the comments and I hope you’ll enjoy my daily posts.

All Photos Taken Today

Click a photo to bring a larger version up in a lightbox, then navigate through them all.