Keith's 2011 Photo Challenge

I used to write New Year's Resolution posts, but that pretty much stopped after Eleanor was born. The first year of her life would have been things like, "Read a book," and "Once a week, wear something other than pajamas before 4pm," not very exciting stuff.

I still like the idea of resolutions, though. I feel like it's taking a few minutes, before we get into the regular routine of the new year, to think about the big picture and what do I really want to do, instead of just letting the year happen. So it's not that I'm against resolutions, but it's just hard for me to make commitments to many different things right now. I would make resolutions about reading and career and hobbies and exercise .... and my fear is, at this point in time, making all those resolutions would just be setting myself up for failure and disappointment. I accept that having a toddler is a full-time job and someday in the future, I intend to start making many resolutions again.

HOWEVER, having said that, we're now getting to the point of today's post: Keith's resolution! Okay, it's not really a "resolution" per say, but a year-long photo challenge. On Wednesdays, shutterboo posts a weekly word for the Photo Challenge and then any interested participants post their picture related to that word.

Keith participated in this challenge once before, but I think his interest fizzled out a bit towards the end. Now, however, he's all fired up because 1) we got a new 50mm lens as a Christmas present from us to us and he loves experimenting with it, and 2) he loaded Adobe Photoshop CS3 onto our newer laptop. We've had the program for a few years but never used it because it was on the old desktop that .... works .... at .... about .... this ..... speed. And then it crashes.

So! Keith's new photo challenge means I get to tag along on interesting outings. His plan is to take the pictures by Sunday so he has a couple days to play with things in Photoshop before posting the final version on Wednesday. This past week's word was "electricity" and we were visiting my parents on Sunday, so when Eleanor eagerly opted to go to the grocery store with them, Keith and I went the other direction, to the power plant in their town.

It was a cold but sunny day. I walked Beckett (or Beckett dragged my arm off) while Keith took pictures. Several things struck me as we walked:

• I had lived in this town for 20+ years of my life, and that was probably the most time I'd ever spent looking at/thinking about the power plant. That's one of the nice things about the photo challenge, getting you to view life a little differently.
• The "hum of electricity" usually seems like an abstract phrase, but not there. I could hear it and feel it as we walked by these massive transformers.
  

Anyway, I think this was a long, rambling post to get to the actual explanation behind the pictures. But I plan on posting for most of Keith's photo challenges, so the next post about it should be a little more coherent. Next week's challenge: Joy!