Sun rising through forest fire smoke. Diamond Lake. Umpqua National Forest. Oregon. August 12, 2012. Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: October 14, 2012. Start of a long term hiatus for the POTD.
Hiatus
Today I am posting the 412th photo of of the day.
Is this my last photo of the day post? It very well might be. I am using the word hiatus instead of end, but it will probably be a long hiatus.
Originally, last December and January, I was really aiming to get 366 photos up this year, one every day. Life was a little more hectic than I expected, and daily posting this year has actually been the exception, not the norm.
Still, I tried to get back in the habit through the month of September. But then October happened and, half way through the month, this is my second post.
It seems like it is time to put a capstone on this project and to move on, for now.
When I first started the POTD on February 13, 2011, I was in a very different place in life than I am right now. I was in a rebuilding phase and, as a part of that rebuilding, I wanted to put more focus on photography as I moved ahead in life.
As I wrote when I created the first POTD album on Facebook:
I've decided to post one "featured" picture every day that I have internet access. Just for the heck of it. Feedback is appreciated. Some, obviously, will be better photographs than others. What I post will be somewhat reflective of my mood, so I may choose some shots more for their personal meaning to me than for their artistic "worth." It is just something to do, it sounds like fun, and it will kick my butt into gear getting out there to take some more pictures!
Well, if the main goal of the project was to inspire me to take more photos, that is a mission accomplished.
In fact, one of the main reason that I am taking a break from this project is that I now have thousands of photos sitting on my hard drives that I haven’t ever looked at on my computer, let alone edited or posted anywhere.
These days, in fact this is precisely why there have been so few POTD posts this month, I would rather spend the 45 minutes to an hour a day it takes to select a photo, edit it, post it, and share it working on editing this back log of pictures than spending all of that time working on one photo.
For the first six months or so of the POTD, I was worried that I’d run out of photos. That I’d have a hard time finding 360 plus photos worth posting. Now, it is just the opposite problem. There are so many pictures sitting on my hard drive untouched and forgotten… Not all, hell most, are what I’d consider POTD quality, but the good ones are getting lost in the shuffle and I need to start spending more time getting them cleaned up and brought out of the dark and into the world.
Also, life is getting busy again. We are entering into a busy phase with one of my kids’ special needs, I want to put at least one calendar up for sale by the end of October, most of my free time in November will be spent writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and in December, along with the holidays and long school breaks for the kids, I want to spend quite a bit of time compiling and curating my photos to enter some contests with end of the year deadlines and to start pursuing some new goals with my photography.
Coupled with all of this, I have some new projects I am working on with my blogs. One, for an example, is over on Suburban Eschatology Part Two where I am starting work on a series of posts about raising a child with Asperger’s Syndrome. Meanwhile, here on Rubble, I am trying to work through a series of posts I’ve been wanting to complete for over a year now on some local hikes, parks, and geological features.
So, I am busy. And, hopefully, there will be a lot more going on here on Rubble than just one photo a day, at best, or a couple a month, at worst.
I can safely say that this will be the last Photo of the Day until December, at the earliest. In 2013, I might return to the practice. Then again, maybe not. Only time will tell. Instead of a Photo of the Day, what I may do instead is throw up a semi-regular Featured Photo post, which is really what the POTD has become anyway.
However, that is the future and this is today. I can see possibilities where the POTD becomes a gratifying creative outlet for me once again. However, until that happens, until it is something I am fired up about again and not something where I randomly open up a recent folder and grab pretty much the first picture that catches my eye, I think it is time to put this project to bed.
Whether it ever wakes up again, we’ll see. I did, intentionally, choose a sunrise photo for today’s post, not a sunset.
Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: October 1, 2012, Middle Fork Valley at Sunset
For a time this year, I tried to keep the POTD alive by not posting them on the blog, but just on 500px & deviantArt. Looking through the “recent” POTD posts, I noticed that I did this for the October 1 picture as well.
Quartz Mountain. Snoqualmie Lake Trail. Washington. August 14, 2012. Photo of the Day by A. F. Litt: October 1, 2012.
Products featuring photography by A. F. Litt:
deviantArt: Prints, cards, mugs, mouse pads, magnets, puzzles and other products.
500px.com – Quality Canvas Prints
Cafe Press: Calendars, etc.
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