After a slight hiatus we are reviving the My Minnesota blog circle. We are a group of photographers around Minnesota and our goal is to showcase what life looks like in this great state. Our summer is hot and humid, our fall colorful and crisp, our winter extreme and our spring, well, let's just say we get an extended winter. 

In January in Minnesota it's pretty common that the temps sit below 0 many days, and some days with the wind chill it drops to -30, so when it's above that we get outside and play and enjoy the winter wonderland. Here is my little guy and his best buddy exploring and just wandering through our back yard in fresh fallen snow on a mild January day. 

Don't forget to follow the circle around and see what my friends are up to. I'm so lucky to have this group of talented ladies in my life. They are pretty awesome. First up is the incredibly talented Lori of Lori Dozier Photography .  

3 times I've started a 365, each time failing. It wasn't the taking a picture a day that got me, I don't struggle much with that. It was the editing that I couldn't keep up on on. Soon a week would go by and I was sitting on 200-500(!!!!) images to go through and pick one a day. I would shoot all the time and then be overwhelmed with the whole process. 

Feeling like a 365 was out of reach, I knew something would need to change if I was ever going to attempt again. I needed to set a goal for my self, a purpose for doing this. I picked intent and growth.  Intent being the main motivator and growth being the outcome. I couldn't allow my self to continually snap random things all day in hopes of creating something worthwhile. I'm not knocking that, I learned so much about myself from that method. This time I just knew I needed to shoot with intent, and be forgiving of myself if the image isn't portfolio worthy, or perfect even. I don't put pressure on myself to capture a certain thing, but I do put thought into what I want to capture, if nothing is grabbing me that day I look for inspiration elsewhere, sometimes it's a technique that challenges me, and sometimes it's as simple as a word. Of course when good old fashioned inspiration comes knocking, I do my best to drop everything else and pick up my camera and answer. 

Here is my January, while I shot daily and stayed caught up on editing, I'm not ready to call this a 365 (366). We'll see what the year brings 

1.1 Getting Leia ready for bed 1.2 breakfast face 1.3 Look of Terror

I don't do new years resolutions. I may have in some point of my life, but if I, did they didn't work. I do, however, spend time at the end of December and the beginning or January reflecting on the past year and the new year that is arriving. I spend some time on artistic reflection as well. Where did I grow? Where did I become too comfortable? And most exciting, what are my plans for pushing my self further. I posted some of my favorite 2015 client a while back and it was fun to see growth(you can catch that here if you want), but this post is dedicated to what causes that growth. I bring a lot of hats to client sessions: creativity, funny, organized, structure, it takes quite some planning to pull off a very relaxed, natural, fun session. When I work with the subjects in this post I get to bring creativity, that's it. The inspiration that I get from creating these images propels and pushes my creativity for working with clients. These probably aren't the most technically sound images, or the best one's I've taken, they are the ones that mean the most to me.  It's been great reflecting, but I am ready to grow more in 2016.