How I Approach Project Life & Our Beijing Week in Photos (April 10 to 16)

I must know my readers well or be a lot like many of my readers, because the winning answer on my poll so far was half written by the time the poll went up! (Don't let that stop you from taking the poll, if you haven't already - please visit the post below this one - it will just take a moment of your time - it's only one question!)

Most readers who answered want to see how I approach Project Life/Project 365. (Continue on after the photos to read a brief overview of my approach.)

First, though, I want to thank all of you who have so graciously taken the time to answer my poll and or leave me comments! You're the best!

THE WEEK IN PHOTOS

Sunday, April 10

We rode our bikes to a nearby park that includes rides for kids including bumper cars and drive-it-yourself boats. Most parks in Beijing offer these carnival like rides. We finished the day off with an early dinner at a Japanese restaurant that serves okanomiyaki - a favorite of ours when we lived in the Kansai area of Japan.

Monday, April 11

Starting the day on Monday, we were greeted by the spring window washers. "Good morning!"

 

Tuesday, April 11

Daystar was off for the day due to parent/teacher conferences, so while Reece was at his interview at BCIS and Braden was sick on the couch, Nicholas played the XBox Connect that Dad brought home from work for a few days. The first at home game console that does not need a controller to play.

 

Wednesday, April 12

Braden was home sick all week. This was day #3 and we were checking in on his temperature once again. (Inspired by an Ella Publishing eZine article, I documented this day Hour By Hour, click here to see my post and my scrapbook layout.)

 

Thursday, April 13

Being silly with Dad. Dad was helping Braden brush his teeth. Braden thought it would be a fun idea to stick his toothbrush on Dad's bald head. And it stuck (suction cups on the bottom of his toothbrush). I suppose that is one advantage to being bald.

 

Friday, April 14

Reece and Nicholas are pouring over the WS cookbook Nicholas got for his birthday. They forgot we even had it until I pulled it out and reminded them of it. I told them they could make breakfast in the morning and I would help. They thought that was a great idea! Hurray!

 

Saturday, April 15

They made a giant baked apple pancake which was enough to feed our whole family with leftovers. They didn't love the recipe. It was too 'egg-y.' We will try this again and adjust the recipe to our family's liking. They enjoyed making breakfast so much that they woke up early on Sunday, wouldn't let us out of our room because they wanted to surprise us with popovers. So sweet of them!

To see all other posts featuring my weekly Photo A Day wrap up, click here.

 

PROJECT LIFE/ PROJECT 365 UPDATE

3 or 4 times a week, I upload my photos into Lightroom.

Next, I rate my photos. Soon after my photos are uploaded, I quickly go through and star my photos. I have a 3 star system. And I go through my photos two or three times first giving all good ones 1 star, then I go back through the 1 stars and upgrade a few to 2 and occasionally I upgrade some to 3, but they have to be worthy.

From those 1 stars, I choose potential POTDs and then keyword them as POTD (Photo of The Day).  I often have more than one photo from the day keyworded as such. A keyword is like a tag, so the photos are easy to sort later on. (Please let me know if you are not familiar with keywords or tags and I will post a screen shot in the next few days to explain what I mean - specific to Lightroom.)

While I am doing this, I also keyword my photos (especially if I have starred them). I usually focus on the names of who is in the photo, location and any other important facts (i.e., special event, relationship, personality trait) I want to remember.

I try to rate and do basic keywording before I upload any more photos, so I can keep track of which ones are finished.

At the end of the week, I view all of my POTD photos. This is very easy to do in Lightroom due to their easy and powerful sorting and cross referencing features. I make sure I have 1 or more photos per day. I narrow it down to one photo for each day. If I have two appropriate photos for one particular day, I will let it slide. (I often leave the keyword POTD on more than 2 photos, but I only export maximum two photos per day to be uploaded to my blog.)

I upload these photos to my blog and write my little blurb. I use this information to jar my memory when I go to write on my journaling cards.

All my POTD photos for my Project Life album are horizontal. A few weeks into last year (my first year doing Photo A Day), I made this decision for a few reasons:

*I don't want to take the extra time to resize my photos to fit the smaller vertical pockets for the Project Life album.

*I don't want to have to worry about how many vertical and how many horizontal photos I need for any other type of multi-photo album page if I decide on that format for 2011.

*To make this project do-able for me, I had to make it as simple as possible! This decision supports that criteria.

NOTE: Every once in a while, I have the perfect photo that is vertical and I am OK with that, but 95% of my photos are horizontal.

*I like the uniformity when looking at the album too. I do not like a vertical photo placed in the album sideways.

Once a month I go through my POTD photos for the month. Sometimes I have 10 or 15 POTDs from one day. I try to narrow those down as much as possible. I do not mind printing more than one photo per day. I plan to use one photo per day for my album and keep the other favorite prints around for scrapbooking purposes. This makes sure I always have a few recent photos to scrapbook.

2010

Since I stopped printing photos for Project Life (BeckyHiggins.com) last year in mid-April, I am also trying to get the rest of those photos printed, so I am going through the rest of the year, one month at a time, making sure I have a POTD for every day.  

For the weeks that I didn't take a photo everyday, I make sure I have at least 7 for the week. I decided to make the rest of 2010 a 7 photos a week project. I am starting mid-April and printing them out by month until I get them all printed. I am currently waiting for mid-April through June. They should be here tomorrow. I will then start putting them in my Project Life album along with much of the ephemera I had been slipping into my album throughout the year.

As I get my pages from 2010 complete, I will share some here. I do not personalize my album much besides adding ephemera and writing on the journaling cards. I knew if I tried to get cute with it, I would never get it done. Besides I am a simple scrapbooker in the purest sense of the word.

Let me know if you have any questions about my system or if you have any tips to share? And if you post your Photo A Day album, please leave me a link in the comments, I'd love to stop by and see it.

 

 

Future Posts You might be interested in:

**how I organize my photos

**how I use the techniques of professional photojournalists to take more meaningful & interesting photos of my life & family

I'm working on these posts right now!

Comments

[Joanne]

That is an excellent way of doing it - I like adding the star system. I have just started doing the mammoth task of going back over past photos and this helps. I will use Bridge in CS4 which has all the same features I think. Thanks for sharing.

[Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie]

Hi Joanne, once you figure out how to organize in Bridge, I would love to hear about it since I use that to organize my digi supplies and I am not very familiar with it. Thanks for stopping by.

[Beth]

I have LR, but I use that for viewing my RAW files and getting rid of bad ones. I never could get the hang of keywording, and I take so many pictures I don't think it would be practical to go back and start.

I also delete pictures from my computer once I'm done with a month or so (I take that many pictures and RAW files are so big I have to get rid of them or my computer is really slow.) I only delete after I back up to the external hard drive.

Thanks for sharing this - I've wanted to do the Project Life posts once a week, but I already post them throughout the week by themselves.

[Nihao, Cupcake! by Margie]

Hi Beth, I can certainly understand feeling overwhelmed with lots of photos! I take more than I would care to admit! Sounds like you have a great system of organizing that works for you. I admire the commitment it takes to post photos daily. That is awesome. Im going to be over to check them out.

[Susan]

Great shots! That picture with the window hangers was so funny!!

[Schona Kessler Photography]

Glad you liked the free project life templates on my blog. Thanks for dropping by!