It actually didn't feel like work till the last couple months. Mainly when I was just running around the house trying to to think of something to take a picture. For most of the year I had something I planned on doing that week. I do agree on the stories being an important part. If it weren't for that I could easily just take a picture and just be done with it. That's why I take the time to try and explain why I did something or why I even highlighted this photo out of a set.

I've been following your blog for a while now, wish you the best of luck in your challenge.

I know it's about the audience but it feels like it's for nothing if no one is reading it. I see other blogs that have thousands of readers and their quality sucks IMO. Perhaps I'm just jaded but the blogs that are like "12 Awesome Ways to Make Your Photos Breathe Life" and then just rehash other posts. It's like, how can those sites get a lot of people, sometimes within a really short time, and I'm here with hardly anyone. It feels like I'm displaying all this great artwork in my house. Sure there are a few people that see it which I enjoy but then you have this plain white billboard that thousands of people view. Granted I also planned on using this blog for more than just photography and share some tech advice I never got around to.

As for next year (well this year now) I've been drafting up something. I'm thinking just general goals of more abandoned places, "photos the interest me", actual do something with model mayhem since I'm on it, etc. Also debating making a tumblr photo blog that is a picture a day from just around the internet that I like. I'm just worried if I relax goals that this will become how it was last year, no new posts for years because I never get around to it.

I appreciate the comment and it lets me know that there are people that read this, just want to get more. Maybe that could be a new years resolution? Although since I'm pretty reserved and don't like pushing my site that may be quite the challenge.

That was actually my fear because the very first post I did something with buster. There we go do a picture a day... OF BUSTER! although all he does is sleep and... nope just sleep.

Thanks, I hope some people learn from my experiences. But really just try it. I did these first few essentially TFP (trade for prints, ie free). Removes stress from feeling like I HAVE to do good because I'm being paid to do it. Just post on the comic convention's forums you're interested in doing some photo shoot and you'll get a few responses. Although it helps to grab a friend and take some shots just to get a feel for things and can link to it when you offer in the forums. Best of luck.

Too bad the place isn't all that interesting now. I think there were like 5 or 6 shoe stores there. Wait, you're a shoe person so maybe you'd be all over it.

Well you didn't really smile in the pic I took either :) (for other people's ref: http://photos.vrillusions.com/index.php?album=eve... ) Although it wouldn't have really looked right if you were all "OMG KAWAII!!!! *V pose*" so it still turned out good :)

Well I'm looking to try some more of these photo shoots if you're going to another con around here. I'm still unsure myself. Thanks for your comments, I appreciate it.

Yeah I guess it's kinda vague. I meant the main blog feed. Either the rss button on menu or if you go to the home page you'll get the feed icon in the address bar (in firefox at least). The separate photography feed and/or just the photos feed will be sometime later.

Yeah it would be nice if you could do some hourly plan. Like buy a card that lets you play for 50 hours for $10 or something. In asian countries they have timed game cards but they are 30 day cards (ie use the card to get access for next 30 days). That wouldn't be bad if it was 30 days that you logged in. So if you only log in during the week it would last you 6 weeks.

Ever since I got screwed by dvdspot deleting everything after 15 days notice on the website (no announcement email) I've been pretty much anti-cloud. The privacy aspect never bothered me but that tomorrow all you data could be gone. I back up my delicious bookmarks every couple of months (trying to figure out a way to automate it weekly).

If privacy is a concern than it needs to be encrypted at the local computer before sending it to whatever server. It's why JungleDisk is practically the only commercial application I have. It encrypts all files locally before sending them to amazon s3. If whatever reason amazon's security got compromised there's my own secret key. In a similar fashion I backup my mysql databases to my gmail account. I take all the db dumps, tar/gzip it, then pgp encrypt it and send it to gmail. Now only I can decrypt that and it's stored in gmail for safe keeping. I should write a post about how I have everything backed up...

Yeah I'm still undecided on intensedebate. Don't like how you have to use javascript. makes loading of main page slow while it gets comment counts for all the posts. One of these days I'll get a basic comment system in here so then comments will get indexed by google and stuff.

I didn't even notice pedobear. There were plenty of others far more interesting than pedobear ;)