My first reaction to the theme for January’s challenge was to select some of the Christmas gifts received by all the members of our family – things recently obtained and new to us. I’m glad my inclination to procrastinate kicked in, because after a couple of days of subconcious consideration, I came up with a plan to create photographs that I hope convey a much broader range of definitions for new.

1. In the most recent period – I knew the first full moon of the new year was going to set well after my alarm went off on January 16, so I took a few minutes the night before to prepare – tripod, longest lens and a fresh battery. And lucky for me, the cloud cover was thin enough that the moon was still visible.

2. Still fresh – I bake every week, often three or four times a week. As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, the main reason is that someone in our family has multiple, severe allergies and baking from scratch really reduces the risk of cross-contamination and mislabeling. Besides, it tastes good! One afternoon this month I baked a loaf of honey-oat bread, cinnamon-streusel loaf and a small batch of buns for that night’s supper.

3. Unaccustomed – One weekend afternoon I noticed a whole bunch of water drops on our window screens. After several days of cold and snowy weather, the afternoon temperature was well above freezing, fast-melting the snow on our roof. The mid-winter sun was low in the sky, creating a strong light/shadow contrast. I decided to try creating a fairly abstract photograph that would highlight the sparkle and then I used a new-to-me LR preset (“concert light”) to bring my idea to the screen.

4. Never used before now – December was a bad month in terms of our relationship with Apple products. Over a two week period, three iPod nanos failed (the on/off buttons stopped working) and then the hard drive in K’s school Macbook failed. (In the interest of full disclosure, the Macbook is about 5 years old. The 4th gen iPod nanos were shipped to us 18 months ago as part of Apple’s 1st gen nano replacement program.) We did some shifting of content to other devices and some in-family device trading that left me wondering what I was going to use to play music during my (infrequent) workouts on the ARC trainer. So I bought a new iPod nano. It’s purple, which I hope means the guys in the family won’t want to use it (very often)! The simple subject matter also made this a good choice for continuing my practice of including an intentional camera movement (ICM) photo in each month’s challenge.

5. Being the latest in a sequence – Each new day brings endless possibilities, including the chance to view an amazing sunrise like this one.

I’d like to bring this new post to an end by thanking P.J. over at A ‘lil HooHaa for hosting the monthly photo blogging challenge. Click here to see everything “new” in P.J.’s world and the list of links to other bloggers taking part in the challenge. Won’t you join us in February, the final month of challenge year 1?