Project 366: Food and Friends

Looking back on this set of photos, it’s obvious that the overriding themes are food, and Arlo meeting new friends. We’ve had good times. Fun, busy days where it was impossible to capture all the events of the day with just one photo. This is one of those 366 installments where I had real trouble narrowing down  my final image for each day. But I got there in the end, and here they are:

Meeting Thomas. Read more about that here.

Meeting a ‘Nee-Naw’ at Dulwich Festival.

When Dada got home from work.

He hates getting dirt on his hands.

The process goes like this: Fall over. Stare at hands for a good minute.

“Oh nooo”.

Shuffle over to Mama on knees so she can wipe your hands for you.

The sun came out! Wooohooo.

Trying to tempt Arlo with an untinentionally phallic ice lolly.

This was meant to be his first ever ice lolly, and I had visions of the great images I would get of Arlo tucking into this. But, of course, he eyed it suspiciously and wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Eating a slice of Dada’s chocolate fudge birthday cake.

 It’s so rare that he will laugh voluntarily for the camera any more (as soon as he sees it he thinks ‘Oh no, not again. What am I, a performing seal?!’)

I had to pull out all the stops to capture this laughter. Singing out of tune scales and repeating “Tinky Winky open the door!” are both winners these days.

Walking along the Thames on my date with Sam for his birthday.

I’m putting Garden Centre on the list of ‘good places to entertain a toddler’.

One of those ‘Arlo’s been suspiciously quite for a while’ moments.

At least he got out a plate for his biscuits.

His first graze.

And I didn’t even notice it until after it had scabbed over.

Ant friends.

Arlo recently learnt the word Ant, or “Aaah”, as he says.

He points and declares “Aaah” every time he sees one, which as you can imagine is pretty much every two minutes whilst we are in the garden.

In our Summer brights. I think I have a problem toning down my summer colours.

Bin day. The most exciting time of the week for Arlo.

Another month done and the project is expanding at an alarming rate. When I started in January, the main task was to remember to take a photo every day. Now, I hardly need to remind myself as it’s become second nature to have my camera permanently attached to my hip. The main task these days is to remember to hone in on a focus for all these images I’m taking every day.

If I don’t think about it, I worry that I could easily end up with a year’s worth of randomly-snapped photos and miss the opportunity to preserve the little moments that were such a big part of our lives this year. I recently saw this 50 photos to take with your kids checklist on Simple As That. I thought this was a great way to help focus in on those important moments, so I decided to tailor my own checklist for our family. I’m hoping this will help me remember the kind of shots I would really like to include in the 366 project.

Some of these have already been checked off since I made the list, and I’ve left space to add new ideas as I think of them. This is now my go-to list when I feel I’m starting to snap away for the sake of getting that one photo a day, or when I could use a little help getting inspired.

On a separate note, I have a confession to make. The collage of Arlo eating the birthday cake was not actually taken on that day. The ice lolly photo was, in fact, taken that day, and I’ve swapped the ice lolly photo and the cake photo around.

The 24th is Sam’s birthday, but we didn’t see him because he was out all day. So, we did cake and candles the day before. But, ten years down the line we may not remember this, and when we are looking back at the images of important dates (ie birthdays), I don’t always want there to be that moment of confusion…’Wait, why is there no mention or hints that it’s Sam’s birthday here?’. It just seemed to fit better when I swapped the photos around.

There was an interesting discussion recently on the Documenting Delight Facebook group about missing days of a 365/366 project. General consensus was that people would rather have an almost-year of great memories than get disheartened by ‘failing’ to take a photo one day and give up on the whole project. And I totally agree with this.

A photo-a-day project is only ever as good as the value it gives you.  I am doing this project is for me and my family, and if I would rather have a birthday cake photo on Sam’s birthday even though I know it’s not chronologically accurate, then I will go ahead and do it.

Similarly, if I happen to miss a day for whatever reason, I would go ahead and fill that day with another photo taken near to that day. This may have happened once before in my project. (perhaps I will tell you about that another time). I thought I would really beat myself up about this, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t care at all.

For me, this project is not about always being entirely technically and chronologically accurate. It’s about fun, and the incredible value it gives me to look back at all these memories – some out of focus, blown out, and 2% not taken on the correct day. But 100% loved and treasured.