Last January, I found a list on Pinterest of 52 words to use as inspiration for 52 photographs. I decided to do this during 2015 and upload them to Instagram in order to keep myself accountable. Now that 2015 is over and I have finished my project, I wanted to look back and share the 52 pictures I took! (I copied my original captions from Instagram under each picture)
Week 1: Water. I’ve always thought eyelashes looked so cool when wet. They stick together to form spiky points. Thanks to Greg for being my eyeball model, I was having little success taking pictures of my own eye.Week 2: Sleep. I tried to get a picture of Teagan, but she sleeps with one eye open and kept waking up to the sound of the camera focusing. Miles has always been my most cooperative model 🙂Week 3: Happy. I walked past a pile of giant stuffed animals at the store yesterday and saw a bright green one laying face down. “I bet that one is a frog!” Sure enough, I picked it up and found this guy! Greg said he could come home with us 🙂 Every time I look over at this face I laugh out loud and smile. It’s something about frogs (and this guy) that makes me happy! (Even though he can be a little creepy sitting there by himself haha)Week 4: Bubbles. It took me a while to find inspiration for this one since I didn’t have a bubble wand available and I was having trouble capturing the rainbow colors when I made some bubbles with dish soap. But then I saw these little bubbles accumulate in my glass of water! It was an unusual source of the photo subject, which is the sort of thing I want to do with this project.Week 5: Spooky. A mental image that has always been iconically spooky to me is “extinguished candle smoke in black and white”. I can’t really explain what it is about this specific subject, and it’s not as if I’m afraid of a candle, I just think it has a definite eerie look.Week 6: Dirty. Pathway in Leu Gardens in Orlando. Literal dirt. The flowers were gorgeous!Week 7: Candy. This worked out perfectly since I was in Harry Potter World yesterday! Dream come true! Awesome rides, excellent shops, and definitely lots of candy! I also got my own wand!Week 8: Snow. Despite being buried under snow, this word was tricky. Finding a subject was almost too easy! I settled on this metal rose we have in our flower box. In the fall, after all the other flowers die, this is the only one strong enough to last the harsh winter! Hopefully we’ll see real flowers blooming again soon (as i hear snow crystals blowing around outside).Week 9: Money. “Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe – ‘cept maybe Hogwarts.” Already dreaming of going back to Harry Potter World in Orlando. Also high on the list is the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London to see the original Harry Potter sets!Week 10: Red. My cranberry juice looked downright sanguine in the sunlight today!Week 11: Morning. Okay this one isn’t my photography, it’s a repost from @harrypottercast. I was having trouble with this word, so I just went with one of my favorite lines in the Harry Potter movies. “Moooorning.”Week 12: Wild. We get raccoons pretty often at the bird feeder. They don’t even flinch when the motion light comes on. They just continue to eat in better lighting! They are about the same size as our cat Miles, but these guys stay outside!Week 13: Pet. I love all 3 of our cats, but Miles just seems to get me sometimes 🙂Week 14: Eyes. I wanted to avoid going the obvious route of photographing someone’s eyes but I couldn’t think of another meaning for “eye” besides eyes growing on potatoes. We didn’t have any potatoes so I had to keep thinking. One of my favorite songs right now is “Eye of the Needle” by Sia. I was wondering how I could work with that when I remembered I have a mini sewing kit with needles!Week 15: Spring.Week 16: Horizontal. We finally have some artwork on our dining room wall thanks to @halfbloodprints! They look amazing!!Week 17: Taste. I went a little abstract on this one. I was thinking of doing something along the lines of “taste buds”, but then I just decided to full on “buds”. No rules! 🙂Week 18: Books. My Harry Potter books were the natural choice for this week’s word. I’m currently rereading the series for the third time. I’m comforted by the familiarity yet still held in suspense by the story. These books feel like home 🙂Week 19: Vertical. When my irises bloomed last year they were all top heavy and fell right over. So far this year’s buds look stronger. Here’s hoping they remain vertical!Week 20: Hat. A graduation cap is a pretty great hat to be able to wear! Picture from our graduation two weekends ago.Week 21: Clean. A new notebook represents endless possibilities. Now I just have to put ink on the paper!Week 22: Wind. I wanted to do a picture of my new kite for this week’s word and I was lucky that today we had some wind! It looked very beautiful on its debut flight!Week 23: Light. I saw Lindsey Stirling in concert for the first time today and she was out of this world! The show was incredible with imaginative sets, great dancing, and of course her phenomenal violin. I look forward to seeing her again! It’s amazing to see someone you admire be so successful being themselves and have their name in lights!!Week 24: Ink. I wanted to photograph something in print for the subject this week. I found an old Britannica atlas at a “twice read” book shop yesterday and thought the art was really cool! A map like this makes Earth seem like a mystical fantasy land.Week 25: Moody. I’m rereading the Order of the Phoenix right now so the first thing I thought of for this week’s word was Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody. “Don’t put your wand there, boy! What if it ignited? Better wizards than you have lost buttocks, you know!”Week 26: Blue. I meant to take a picture of something red, white, and blue for this week’s subject , but I forgot the memory card for my camera at home when we went to the lake! I ended up mostly taking a bunch of pictures of Zara anyway. She is so stinkin’ photogenic! Those blue eyes just get me every time 🙂Week 27: Sneaky. We get a ton of Goldfinch on our bird feeder. (I’ve named them all Goldie to prevent confusion) They always fly away when I get too close to the screen door to take a picture, so I have to be sneaky! Just look at his cute little foot clinging to the perch! 🐥Week 28: Food. I wanted to try and avoid just posting a picture of my food, to try and get creative with this word, but I just couldn’t resist this picture of my delicious mac and cheese 🙂Week 29: Fur. Recently this black cat has started coming around to our house. We don’t know where he lives, but we love having him come by! He loves getting pets and we love giving them!Week 30: Cold. Nothing like some cold water on a humid day! I’m playing catch-up on these photos since we were busy moving! (I was also finding it hard to be inspired by this word when it’s been so hot!)Week 31: Flowers. This was an easy one because flowers are my go-to subjects!Week 32: Self-portrait. I didn’t want this photo to be a selfie! So instead I took a picture of all the things I keep around me all the time, the stuff that I never really put away.Week 33: Beauty. This one is a video. Baby bunnies! What could be more beautiful than nature? They were so squirmy; whenever one twitched, they all jumped! So cute!Week 34: Fire.Week 35: Feathers.Week 36: Shadow. It was a pretty cool experience to see the lunar eclipse of the super moon the other day! It’s not every day you get to see Earth’s shadow!Week 37: Shoes. I just got these in the mail in my Fandom of the Month Club package! They are called shwings. They just tie on your laces!Week 38: Hands. I just taught myself the song Frère Jacques and then played it without looking at the music! Haha baby steps! 🎻Week 39: Nature.Week 40: Hot. These sunsets have been on fire these past few weeks! Golden autumn sunsets are one of nature’s many displays that show me God. I’m thankful to have a nice balcony to enjoy this view!Week 41: Sand. This was from about a month ago when we went to Cape Cod. We found a beach by Chatham lighthouse and it was practically covered in these little squishy things! We still don’t know what they were, but my guess is jellyfish eggs!Week 42: Love. Lately I’ve been enjoying drawing wreath graphics that I find on pinterest. It’s fun because you can find an idea you like and then make it your own! This one is simple, but I like it!Week 43: Movement. Australian Gouldian Finch at the Franklin Park Zoo. They were so cute! But difficult to capture in a photograph since they are so twitchy! 🙂Week 44: Architecture. I saw the side of this building while walking the Freedom Trail in Boston. It just struck me as beautiful. Let’s go back to building castles. 🙂Week 45: Reflection.Week 46: Touch. Just touch the pen to the paper and see where it goes.Week 47: Green. Lately I’ve been experimenting with quotes and fancy lettering. I scanned this quote I drew and then put it in a photo editor on my computer. I set a double exposure with a photograph I took this summer of some trees and made this! 🙂Week 48: Love. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.”Week 49: Patriotic.Week 50: Sparkle. Long exposure of our Christmas tree! I made a circular motion with the camera while the shutter closed. #nofilterWeek 51: Night. Reflection of our Christmas tree on the dark window.Week 52: Soft. My grandparents’ new kitten, Mocha, is so soft! She paused her grooming to pose for a picture.
So there you have it! With each word/photograph, I tried to either go with the first idea I thought of, almost like a word association exercise, or I did the opposite and tried to think of something abstract that might give another meaning to the word. All in all, it was a fun project to do throughout the year and it’s neat to look back and remember my thought process for each week’s photo.
Would you be interested in doing a photo challenge like this? Give it a try! You don’t need to start in January; you can make it work any time of year. You can find other word lists like the one I used on Pinterest or make your own!
Flourish & Blogs 