I have been reflecting on what this time of year means, the culmination of one year and the birth of a new one. It is a new beginning, a fresh start, another chance, promise and inspiration, moving forward, looking back, being grateful for another year, it is hope. For me, 2010 means ecstatically the coming of my first grandchild!

The new year always inspires me to go through the untidy areas of my life and refresh, reorganize and sort everything out. Since my server was down one day this week leaving me with no internet, I decided to start the long neglected task of organizing my iPhoto Library. The images and photos I collect and store there for my art work are to me like kernals of hidden potential waiting to reveal their stories when tapped by my imagination. But over time my photos steadily accumulated haphazardly in iPhoto although I managed to create smaller folders to sort out specific subject matter. Once I started the reorganization, I realized what an enormous task I had set out for myself, but I was commited to completing it. After 3 long thorough days I had sorted, arranged and saved a total of 3,493 photos and images. This past year I frequently have gone through the images eliminating many because I am also constantly downloading more. I continually have this fear that a window is going to pop up telling me it cannot take one more photo!

When I started building my library, I paid for photos from sites such as Photos.com and Dreamstime Stock Images where you pay for the rights to use the images in artwork and even to sell the work, just not the images. But soon I realized what a wealth of free photos and images are available online and in the public domain. So I seldom buy an image now rather I get them from sites like Wikimedia Commons and Flickr's Creative Commons and more. I am very pleased with my collection of vintage photos and document images - they hold the promise for me of new art in the future.