Reflecting

It seems like only a few months ago that I was reflecting on the past year’s achievements and was all gung ho to get started with the new year (oh yeah, it was almost six months ago). Then life happened and smacked me down. Fast-forward to today when my wife took a picture of me this morning while I was driving. Looking at it depressed me because it made me realize I haven’t kick-started my year to be where I want to be enough. It was like looking in the mirror naked without your clothes on to cover up the hurt. I need to light the fire up under my ass and the best was I know how is by setting goals and taking photos.

The first goal is to further define myself as a photographer. Looking at my past work with a critical eye is not very fun, but it’s necessary. I’m trying to identify the trademark things that I do that help define my style. In order to further this process, I’m going to start a new month long photo project. The theme of my project is going to be abstract photography. My ultimate goal with this is to create at least one abstract photo that has a purposeful meaning – something that I can show somebody and say “This is what I can do”.

My first photo will be this one of a barbed wire fence – at this angle it reminded me of a metallic American Flag. I think it’s a good start, but I’ve got a ways to go. I’ve created a set on my Flickr stream for this project, and like my past projects, I’ll periodically remind you of it here.