Inspiration: Gavin's First Year

This is the kind of idea we always have... too late. Fortunately, Gavin's parents -- two self-professed geeks -- are a fair bit faster off the block than we are. Their goal was to take a picture of Gavin every day of his first year of life: "Never again in our lives do we develop and grow so much in just one year so this seemed to be the perfect way to capture the changes."

Says Gavin's mom of the process, which she documents on Gavin's Blog:

"While a great keepsake for Gavin, this was also a way for me to learn to take better pictures. When you take a photo of the same subject usually in the same setting (our living room almost every weekday) every day, you're forced to avoid boredom by becoming a little adventurous. I became more comfortable just capturing Gavin as he is and not trying to create the perfect portrait studio image every day."

Check out all the photos, in calendar form, here.

If, like us, you've missed the boat on capturing every day of your child's first year, it's not too late to be inspired by this idea. There are a lot of ways to repurpose this process, such as documenting each day of your favorite season or taking a photo of your child with a new pet for the first year of your pet's life.

Comments (9)

This is great! I wasn't quite so ambitious to take a photo every day (although I probably came pretty close), but I did take a photo once a week. After my son's first birthday I compiled the photos in a Kodak gallery album and sent them to our friends and family. It's remarkable to see how quickly they grow!

posted by lisamfb on February 5th 2009 at 4:40pm
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I also wasn't quite as ambitious. I took a photo every month on my daughter's birthday. In each picture she wore a white 12-month onesie. I love seeing how she changed. By the end, we really had to squeeze her in it.

posted by Cicely'sMom on February 5th 2009 at 4:51pm
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I did this! And I'm still doing it. Going on 3 years now. It's nuts! I took the first year and made a coffee table book of it and it's my parents and my prized possession! Such great memories!

here is my son's blog:
http://www.chella.typepad.com/keaton

Michelle
http://www.everydaycelebrating.com

posted by Michelle@Everyday Celebrating on February 5th 2009 at 5:18pm
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I'm doing the same thing... it's crazy and fun and totally worth it!

posted by girlwithgreencard on February 5th 2009 at 11:45pm
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I would love to do this, but maybe once a week is more feasible for me.

posted by kpag on February 6th 2009 at 9:30am
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I'm also doing this. I love the calender format and didn't even think about doing it that way. Thanks for the inspiration!
Great job also on getting the baby to look into the camera with wide open eyes every time - that's been a challenge for me.

posted by barek176 on February 6th 2009 at 9:31am
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I have taken a photo of may daughter every day since she was born as well. She is now over 4 years old. We reached a 1000 daily Hayleys as I call them in September 2007, so now I guess I'm close to 1500 photos. Of course it's not just one a day. I take up to 1 to 100 of her a day, depending on the occassion. So I have quite a few photos.

I have a daily Hayley poster 1 year poster as well. You can see it here.

http://thedailyhayley.blogspot.com/2008/01/passage-of-time.html

I made my all black and white to make it more visually pleasing.

I'm working on the 1000 days poster. But in the meantime I've resorted to making Daily Hayley albums using Burb. And I try to do digital scrapbooks, but due to the amount of photos I take I'm hopelesssly behind...sigh. But it's great to have such a record of her growing up.

posted by stefsie on February 6th 2009 at 10:22am
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This is awesome. I've done my triplets' pictures every month in the same chair. And I take lots of pictures of them, but there's no way in the beginning I could have done this. Esp when they were in the NICU. (Excuses, excuses... :)

posted by pyjammy on February 6th 2009 at 12:09pm
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I take photos on each of my kids' birthday days every month. I've made collages like the one above for us and the grandparents. Quite fun!

posted by melonkelli on February 23rd 2009 at 4:39pm
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