The Gratitude Project

I’ve been thinking for a while what I wanted to do this year to revive a photography project for me.  I find if I don’t have something I’m working on, I don’t consiously try and improve my photography.  Then an idea came to me.   A few years ago someone I respect and admire came to me one day and asked if he could take my picture.  He was working on a project where he would take a picture everyday of someone he was grateful for.  In my case it was out of our influence in his son’s life.  I was so touched by that!  To imagine that I was someone that inspired gratitude.  As I’ve been thinking about that moment I thought that it would be pretty cool to combine my love of photography, and my desire to get better at it, with a project something like what he was doing.

So, here is The Gratitude Project.  

\ˈgra-tə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\

The quality of being thankful:  readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.  

Once a week on Sunday’s I’ll bring you a photo, or a few photos that represent something or someone I’m grateful for, and then tell you why.  I want it to be something encouraging and maybe stretching too.

Here’s this week’s photos.

This week I’m thankful for Winter.  In my part of western Canada we get 4 distinct seasons and we definitely get Winter.  This year with El Niño it’s been a lot more mild than in other years.  Some years in January we’re dealing with -30’s Celcius (-22 F or lower).  If you know me I don’t like to be cold.  At ALL.  We complain a lot about the cold, the length of the season, how much we wish it would warm up, how long our winters are.  And yet, the cold and the snow and the season brings with it such beauty, and honestly a lot of perspective.  I want to be more grateful for what’s in front of me.  

This week we had several days with softly falling snow.  All day long, snow was slowly drifting down.  It left lovely little clusters of snowflakes in the crevices of the hedge and looked beautiful.  If you look carefully enough, you can see some of the individual shapes of each unique snowflake.  That speaks to me about each person’s uniqueness and design too.  And, the purity of the white snow always strikes me from a spiritually symbolic perspective too.  Snow brings cleansing, snow brings stillness and silence.  I’m grateful for the snow.  

On Saturday morning the temperature dropped quite a bit, to the -20’s and because it had been moist and humid the last few days, that meant we had hoarfrost on the trees.  That is a spectacular sight.  All the trees are frozen with a white coating.  When the sun comes out it is an amazing contrast.  This part of my world is pretty special.  

I was thinking yesterday that maybe some of you might like to join me on this project.  You might like to take a picture (or pictures) of what you’re grateful for each week.  It means we have 50 weeks ahead of us.  I really think it will be a great encouragement to capture these people and things.  A significant and special focus for the year!  

There’s no real rules, you don’t have to be a great photographer (though I hope to improve over the year), it’s just pictures and the reason why you’re grateful each week. It can be one picture or more.  And it’s a great discipline to do it each week.  Maybe you want to do it 2x per month or something like that.  Regardless....  I’ll be posting on Sunday’s because I usually don’t have stamping posts on those days.  If you’d like to join me, just leave me a comment here on the blog, and I’ll stop by and visit!

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The Gratitude Project