the new year

2012 is here!!  This isn't my first blog post of the new year, but these are the first photos of 2012.
I've got high hopes for this year in photography!  I won't call them resolutions, but many of my new photography goals do overlap with the list of resolutions I wrote on the first page of the new Moleskine Evin gave me for Christmas.  This year, I want to:

• get good at food photography.  I put this in yesterday's post, but since I'm compiling a list of goals, I'm putting it here too.  This means researching both photography tips and food styling information, looking at tons of food photos and figuring out what I do and don't like about them, and cooking A LOT so I have stuff to practice on.
• become proficient with 120 film as well as home processing.  I just sent payment for a Yashica Mat 124 and can't wait to start fiddling around with it.  I think I'm going to test out the camera and practice with black and white film that I can develop at home, but one of the difficulties with that is that I don't have a negative scanner so viewing the photos might be a challenge (though I sort of have a plan I think might work).
• focus on QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.  I have so, so many bad photos filling up my external hard drive from the past five years.  As far as numbers go, take less photos (except for hired work) and weed out the junk when there's time.
• work for people!  Browse craigslist, send emails, talk to people...get hired.
• shoot more portraits.  This falls partially under the above bullet point, but I'd like to shoot unhired, for-fun portraits too.
• go places.  With a mischievous puppy who drives my parents nuts when I leave him with them, it's hard to think about going away for the weekend...but I'll work on his behavior and hopefully he's easier to handle by the time that June Ireland trip rolls around (I have a feeling I'll be hard pressed to keep up with my goal to take fewer photos while I'm in beautiful Ireland though).
• BE CREATIVE.

This is unrelated to my photography goals but is related to the new year...the background on my phone is a polar clock, which uses different rings to represent month, day, hour, minute, and second...the fullness of each ring depends on the progress of the time frame it represents, so during the last second of the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the last month of the year, every ring was full, and on the first second of the first minute of the first hour of the first day of the first month of the year, my screen was blank.  Ever since I set the clock as my background, I told myself that I'd watch it religiously when the new year came...and I did, and I took two photos.  This exercise also taught me about live TV delay...my polar clock reset and my phone turned midnight while the New Years ball was still dropping on the television.