Needing Inspiration

As I was scanning in Bess' win picture from two weekends ago (and I will get around to posting it!), I realized that I have been sorely lacking in the picture taking department. This is probably going to sound incredibly anal retentive, but it helps me to keep the pictures organized and it's a lot easier for me to find what I'm looking for. I keep all the pictures I take of the dogs in one large folder. Within that folder, I have the pictures saved in folders categorized by the month and year that they were taken. Therefore all pictures taken in April of 2011 are in one folder. Makes saving very easy! The sad part came when I realized that I'm half way through the month and the April 2011 folder doesn't have a whole lot of pictures in it. It's not as though we haven't been out doing things, I've just felt very uninspired lately to actually take pictures. And it's kind of been that way for the past few months.

Last year I started out doing the 52 Weeks For Dogs and I was doing pretty well. I was getting those weekly pictures in and I was pretty happy with some of the shots that I was getting. Shots that I might not have put the effort into trying to get otherwise. Then I fell off the wagon. And just stopped going for it all together. I REALLY want to go back to trying to capture great pictures of the dogs, but I'm just feel so blah about it! I'm very uninspired. I feel like we're just going to all the same places and I'm just taking all the same pictures. I need a challenge! I need a group that will post weekly challenges to strive for. One that will give me a constant weekly goal to work towards. The 52 Weeks group was great, but the actual challenges were a little sporadic and I was having a harder time coming up with stuff on my own. As horrible as it sounds, I need a little regular direction in this area to get my creative juices flowing! And I think I've found just the group I've been looking for.:0)

It's a group called Photo Friday. They post a weekly challenge of sorts each Friday. You take the challenge and interpret it in your own way. I really like it! There's a fairly large group of people participating, so if I get into a rut, I can look over their pictures and get some ideas. The really great part is that the people involved are taking pictures of a wide variety of things. It's not just dog people taking pictures of dogs. While that's where my focus will be, I can hopefully get some fresh ideas from some of what others are posting, and incorporate that into a picture with one or both of the dogs. The added bonus is that I can use either dog as I see fit, or both of them in the shot. I'm pretty excited about it and I already have some ideas for this week's challenge!

Now on to Bess' win picture! Unfortunately, I'm not thrilled with how Bess looks in the picture. I was hoping for a pretty stellar picture since it's been a while since we've had a win picture. Overall her body looks fine, but her head, not so much. And I'm really picky about her head. Oh well. Regardless, we still got the point! I will leave you with a better win picture.:0)