Orchard Point Studios, New Hampshire Photographer, Wedding Photography, Family, Individual Portrait, Londonderry, Manchester, Southern NH » Photographing People

One of my goals for the New Year is to get in shape, drop a few (40+) pounds, and to plan a path and continue on it for a healthier lifestyle. I haven’t mentioned it until now because losing weight as a New Years Resolution is less than original, and honestly, I tend to believe that announcing things isn’t as important as doing things, more on this in a bit.

So why now? Why after deciding that I was going to keep this particular goal more private am I broadcasting it? Only because I feel that it’s a critical piece of knowledge that will set the scene for all of the things that I want to write about that have arisen due to the pursuit of that goal.

From the time I first laid out this goal for myself, the personal, professional, and philosophical parallels have been stacking up. I decided yesterday that I wanted to start getting them on the blog as another step for me to learn from them.

So for today I’ll go back to the very first lesson that I or anyone can learn from related to the execution of this particular goal.

My “out of shapeness” has been evolving for about six years beginning shortly after not returning to the gym when life got busy. I continued to allow them to pull the standard monthly fee for over a year after my last visit, initially because I had full intentions of going back, then later because I hoped the thought of wasting money would draw me back.

Over the past year and a half things began to exponentially get worse, a new job with less activity, multiple commitments giving me plenty of excuses to sit in front of the computer, a new schedule that had me eating loaded nachos while reclined on the couch at 10pm, and worse yet, that “well I guess this is the way it’s gonna be” acceptance attitude. Tons of reasons over the course of six years equaled nearly 50 pounds, and that extra weight meant a lot less enjoyment of life.

About 2 weeks before New Years 2010 I announced that I was going to make a change and that I was going to loose weight. My big secret? My thought was that announcing it before New Years gave the statement more validity, less cliche “why wait till New Years, I’m starting now!”

Now referring to my statement earlier about “doing rather than announcing” is where today’s point finally reveals itself.

Announce it! That’s all I did, I changed no behaviors, no plans, no goals, I announced it and went along business as usual as if the simple act of stating it would make it happen. Obviously nothing positive happened, as a matter of fact quite the opposite, Christmas and New Years Happened and I accumulated a few more pounds. Beyond New Years I continued to change nothing for four days, that’s when I saw a picture of myself from New Years Eve that was less than flattering, that is when it hit me.

The next day January fifth was the first official day of the new goal and plan. The first thing I did was to promise myself that I was going to go through with the plan no matter how tough it got. Recalling some insight from Tony Robbins regarding pain and the avoidance of pain being a powerful motivator I prepped for the challenge. Instead of focusing on the pain of exercise and diet change, I am focusing on avoiding all the pains related to being overweight and out of shape and using those to motivate me to accomplish my goal. I have a big list of the changes I’ve made to move forward on my path, and one month into it I am more than optimistic about my progress and can clearly see the goal.

I have witnessed this same phenomenon in myself many times. I get a great idea, say I’m going to do something and that’s where the journey ends, other than occasionally reiterating that I’m going to do it. I have a few ideas in the front of my mind now that could use a dose of the lesson I learned above, but I will stop short of saying “I’m going to do it!”

Here is yet another post that is overdue. A choice few pictures from this past year that I really enjoy looking at.

I know I’ve posted this picture before, but it is tied with the Boston City Skyline panorama taken at the same time as being my absolute favorite from this past year. You can read about it at the link above.

-Easily coming in second is this picture that Debbie took on the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo walk back in July. This was shot through a chainlink fence and I love the way the chainlink fence adds a subtle nearly undetectable layer of depth and texture to the photo.

- OK the rest are in no particular order, just a few others that I consider to be among my favorites of the year.

This one of Jonathan was taken one morning while waiting for the bus to come. I was eager to get out and try out a lens that I had just bought used. So I grabbed the tripod and dragged it to the bus stop to get a shot in front of the burning bush. The lens is an old school manual focus 105mm 2.8 Nikon lens that I mounted to my 7D with an adapter. I was pretty close to Jonathan when I took the shot so the result is an almost too shallow depth of field with a manual focus lens. I was probably more than just a little lucky that his eyes are so sharp, the fron half of his nose is soft and the focus already drops of significantly at his temple, that and his blue eyes definitely have a way of drawing right to the subject of the picture though. 

-Here is another one that I have posted before but I just love it. We had a great day with Angela and Justin and produced a ton of great stuff at the same time. I look forward to being able to work with both of them again in the future. I believe one of the reasons I like the image so much is the sort of clasic feel it has to it. Angela just behind Justin having a slight timid look and Justin giving a pretty confident serious don’t mess with us look.

-I hope to get more just like this one throughout the coming year. One of my New Years goals is to get cracking on organizing, displaying, and getting into albums and books all of our personal pictures as well as taking more and more. This one was captured by balancing my D300 on a stone wall along side a river then running back to the Adirondack chairs in the middle of the park and sitting down before the click, It only took three tries. I believe it was in Peterburough, NH while we were on the tail end of one of our aimless weekend drives.