PJFL Free Portraits 2016

Our library had free portraits! How wonderful. These are actually our first professional pictures as a family. And these were pretty close to the kids birthday.

The background is... rain clouds? Gray shag carpet? Who knows. 

Family picture

James is looking pretty tall.

Miranda smiles sometimes.

Miranda's Month Photos 2015

Oh, how my little baby girl has grown! I miss it all already! Here are her month photos.

The day Miranda was born

1 Month Old

Not her actual 2 month photo but I like this one much better


3 months, and showing a little leg!


4 Months, the month she meowed a lot.

5 Months, with her Nana

6 Months, sitting on her own

7 Months, cuteness explosion!

8 Months, enjoying Christmas, pre-crawling and scooting

9 Months, speed crawling and sleeping through the night!

10 Months, just a few days from walking on her own...

11 Months, walking and running everywhere

12 Months, running at her party (again, cuter than the sticker picture)

Okay, so despite all my promises when James was born that I would try to do the same stuff for them, I did not get a photo of Miranda every single day. This was not because Miranda was less adored though, it was because it wasn't much fun the first time I did it with James. But I took photos almost every day, since unlike with James, I always had a camera phone handy. I took approximately 2,400 of Miranda her first year, so does it really matter that they weren't all on consecutive days? No.

Almost 365 days... I couldn't get them all in one screen shot.

• James's Month Photos 2012

James's Month Photos 2012

Many people keep a set where they take a photo each day, it's basically an internet meme called "365." I tried once to do it in 2008, but it was so boring that I failed after a month or two. When James was born, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try again Not only is James the most interesting person for me to document, but it would really show how much he changed day by day. And wow! He's grown so much!

James 365 Project

Truth be told, it's really hard to remember every day especially when you're a sleep deprived parent, so I cheated a handful of times.  But it's pretty complete. Here's the summary version with 1 photo a month.

The day James was born

1 Month Old, first trip to the Cape

 

2 Months and smiling!


3 months, getting a little bigger!


4 Months, visiting Grandma again


5 Months, Mr. Personality, wearing some pants

6 Months, starting to sit on his own


7 Months, being cheeky probably because he's starting to get teeth


8 Months, enjoying Christmas crawling and pulling up


9 Months, starting to walk and sleeping through the night!


10 Months, running!


11 Months, tantrumming about


12 Months, running around outside

Thanks for the stickers, Christina!

Photo Project 2007-2012

In 2007, I started working on a hobby project to get all my photos available digitally online.  I mainly wanted a safe backup of all my photos in case of fire or flood, but I also wanted to be easily able to print whichever photos I wanted quickly.   I got my first digital camera halfway through 2003.  The photos it took weren't very good quality by today's standards, but I almost immediately abandoned my film camera.  Not only that, but I greatly increased the number of photos I took because I wasn't printing most of them.  The economic incentive was the opposite of what it was with film camera: the more photos the more cost-effective my camera was.  It took me two years to get all of my digital photos online 2003-March of 2009,  just because there were so many.  At the same time, I was scanning all of my non-digital prints.  

My "photo den" (Kevin's office) in Charlottesville, December 2007

Well, this January, I finally finished. I have all my photos of family, friends, and places I've traveled on Flickr.  Some of those people I've lost, and now all I have is these photos and my memories.  I don't regret the time I invested taking, scanning, editing, and posting photos.  And I look forward to enjoying the albums I can make fairly easily now.  I do wish I had a few more of the loved ones I lost, but all I can do is be sure to capture some more important memories from here on out.

Screenshot of my Flickr collections