Aiming for a picture a day

Years ago I had a chance to interview famed nature photographer Jim Brandenburg about his unique book “Chased By The Light.”

For 90 days in the fall of 1994, Brandenburg took only one picture per day. He captured some amazing images during that span ... and a few he wished had been better. One of the fascinating parts of the book for me were his descriptions of the pictures and how hard he worked to get the perfect shot each day. The overall idea was cool enough that it has generated many imitations in the years since. In fact, Brandenburg did the same thing in a 2003 book, “Looking for the Summer.”

Anyway, while mired in a funk recently I decided to tackle something remotely similar, albeit much less difficult and undoubtedly less impressive.

For the next year I hope to post an outdoors-related picture every day to my Scattershooting blog. Understand, I’m not going to limit myself to taking only one picture per day. But I will post just one picture per day.

Now this is certainly not a novel idea, as there are plenty of Web folks who have already tackled this concept. Click here to read a page that gives advice on how to pull this off.

But I need something to get me energized again. There are too many negatives swirling around the world of newspapers. Careers are ending. Papers are closing. The future is in doubt. Enough said.

It’s my hope that taking pictures of the natural world will help me put that in perspective. Then too, part of my motivation for trying this is that I frequently see images I wish I had taken but failed to get because the camera was elsewhere. I am going to force myself to carry the camera everywhere this year.

Above is my first effort, dated April 5, 2010. This pair of Canada geese was feeding in a small pond located near the corner of Heinz Road and U.S. Route 150. Look for plenty more goose pictures in the weeks to come, since I enjoy watching these big birds as they prepare to nest and raise their goslings.