A Photography Habit

"It's vital to establish some rituals - automatic but decisive patterns of behavior - at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way." Tyla Tharp from The Creative Habit"

I've been thinking a lot about the above quote in regards to my photography.  I'm a newbie mamarazzi  and I feel all over the place.  I've been at it for about 6 months longer than Sarah but she's been consistently able to post a larger quantity of great pictures than I have.  And I realize now it's because I'm not in the habit of taking pictures, or blogging for that matter.   And it's not that I don't want to take pictures or blog I just forget to and by the time I remember it's getting dark and time for dinner. Or I take lots of pictures but forget to empty the card and by the time I do get around to emptying the card, the images are no longer blog worthy because some little daily event I hoped to preserve took place weeks ago.  Case in point: I'm using pictures I shot the day after Christmas to decorate this post.  Ha!  Read on and you'll see how awkwardly I tried to make the photos fit this topic.

After reading that quote I realize that I need to cultivate a ritual for photography; A little routine done daily that will become ingrained in me.  I wonder what other mom photographers do.  Do they leave their cameras on their nightstand and put it around their neck first thing in the morning?   Does the camera follow them into every room waiting for that first candid moment?  Do they wait for a candid moment or do they create candid moments? How do they keep their camera from falling in the soup? When do they delete pictures and drain their card? Do they have a set time for blogging?  What would work for me?  My biggest issue is simply REMEMBERING to do the habit in the first place.  I need to find a way to remind myself that I want to take pictures.  Oh, and I also need to remember to CHARGE THE BATTERY.

Daniel gave me the camera I've been dreaming about for Christmas.  I was completely shocked and surprised because I had willingly resigned myself to getting the most out of the Olympus we bought off of my brother a year prior.  I liked the Olympus.  I got some good pictures out of it.  I learned how to shoot in Manual mode with the Olympus.  But it had it's drawbacks.  It maxed out on ISO's at 1600 and then there was the lens problem.

Here are some of the first pictures I took with my Nikon.  I didn't know how to work the settings on the camera yet so the first pictures were taken on auto mode.

Of course the first picture had to be of Dominic.  Well Dominic and Daniel but Dan asked me to crop him out of this photo for some reason.  I have to admit the first time I heard it's shutter click, I was smitten.  Such a nice sound, like a whisper compared to the Olympus.

I literally hugged it when I snapped this shot of our tree.   It's not a great shot or anything but it made me oh so happy for some reason.

Here's a shot I took in our dark kitchen.  I woke up from a nap to find Bernadette making cupcakes.  That's how we roll around here.

We took the boys out for a wagon ride in the evening.  My olympus wouldn't have handled the darkness as well as the Nikon did.

Okay,  I kissed my camera after I shot this picture in manual mode.  And then I kissed the awesome man that gave it to me.