Happy New Year!  The New Year is typically a time for resolutions and goals—generally aimed at improving your health or your life.  Unfortunately, they are also easily abandoned and left unrealized.  So maybe instead of focusing on weight loss or exercise or one of those other hard to realize goals, we can take some inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this month, and focus on action each day instead.

So for January we have a list of verbs…one for each letter of the alphabet and five more thrown in…to inspire action through photography.  As always, you are welcome to interpret the prompts in whatever way inspires your creativity and pushes your photographic eye. Maybe the action is captured by the photograph.  Or maybe the verb reflects the actions you use to prepare your photo—with filters and editing, camera lenses or photographic techniques.  This might be the month  to explore light and shadow, the rule of thirds, and a variety of angles.  (Let us know if you’ve tried a specific technique so we can all learn from you!)

After you shoot, post a photo each day with the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices to Twitter, Instagram, Flicker, Google+ and/or Facebook (the more the better!), so that we can all enjoy the posts.  If you are game for some extra action, compose a blog post about a photo, a week’s worth of photos, write a photo essay, or try a learning walk!  (More about learning walks here and here) You are invited to create a pingback by linking to this url or post your blog address in the comment section.  It’s fun for me to see what others are doing with the same prompts I am using!

Here’s the list:

1. analyze

2. build

3. create

4. climb

5. dash

6. examine

7. focus

8. generate

9. help

10. innovate

11. jumble

12. kick

13. lick

14. mentor

15. make

16. nudge

17. organize

18. peek

19. program

20. question

21. resolve

22. renovate

23. submit

24. teach

25. understand

26. utilize

27. vouch

28. write

29. eXamine

30. yearn

31. zip

Let’s make an impact in 2014!  Have fun, be creative, explore the limits of your photography…January is the perfect time to follow through with what you have been meaning to do for a while.  You can post every day, once a week, or even sporadically throughout the month…whatever works in your life.  Be sure to share and tag your photos with #sdawpphotovoices so we can find them!

And here’s a photo to inspire you to get started!