on 10.10.10, beautiful fall mornings and world hoop day

A few weeks ago, I decided to sign up for Heather Champ's 10.10.10 project -- a simple photography project that invited you to take a photograph any time on October 10th, 2010, and share the photograph in their Flickr pool.

Simple enough, right?

So, yeah, I signed up.  And I was all very laid-back about the whole thing.  After all, I shoot practically every day anyway, so this was going to be a breeze.

Given this, I also signed up for the One Day On Earth 10.10.10 project as well -- I mean, as long as I was shooting for Heather, I might as well shoot for them, right?  I even tweeted about it.

Then my friend Ryan saw my tweet.   "Hey!" he said, "I'm so glad you're participating! I already know what I'm going to shoot!" 

And that's when I started to freak out.

All of a sudden, it became very, very important that I photograph something unusual for the day.  Something that I wouldn't otherwise shoot.  It didn't necessarily have to be meaningful, you understand, just uncommon.  Something different.

So this morning, I woke up, noted the beautiful day and realized that I had absolutely nothing in mind to photograph.  I walked outside, and saw a woodpecker, which I thought was kind of cool, but really, was it cool enough to photograph for 10.10.10?

Of course, by the time I debated this thought, decided to go back inside and get my camera, attached my huge zoom lens, and walked back outside, the woodpecker had grown rather bored of me and left.  I came back inside.

And that's when I saw Happy Katie's tweet: 

Seriously? Hula hooping?

I announced to the family that we were headed downtown to Discovery Green.   And while I had no idea whether the experience would be meaningful, I knew that it would be different.  And certainly provide some cool photo ops:

It was such a beautiful day, and the light was great, so of course, yes, I enjoyed taking the photographs.  But as I kept taking shots of the people I saw, I couldn't help but be quite taken with the fact that here we were, a bunch of total strangers, of all different types and genders and races, wiggling our butts to the music with rather gay abandon.  The energy was fun and joy-filled, and just a great reminder that even given all of our differences and despite any political discord, or even natural disasters and conflicts, this world is still a beautiful place.

Also, since I took over 1000 photos, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to put together another stop-motion video.

Enjoy.