365 Project

12-30-16

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Day 365 / 730 –  But wait, there’s still one more.

I started 365 to do one thing, to learn more about photography.  I didn’t know about composition, camera settings, or even what I really wanted to shoot.  365 projects are great for that.  Shoot every day for a year and you are bound to learn something.  Post those photos every day, and you will see patterns emerge, things you go back to, and a voice emerging.

The second year of 365 was different.  It was all about posting photos, not taking photos, and that changed things, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse.  Near the end of the first year, I was spending entirely too much time shooting.  I could spend three hours walking around shooting, go home and edit for an hour or two, and in the end I would have posted one or two images.  Everything else was archive, not likely to see the light of day.

The problem was that I wound up shooting things just for posting, not for quality posting.  There was stuff I really liked, things I was proud of, but I posted a lot of photos that I wasn’t proud of.  That can happen when you have a deadline to meet, and every day is a deadline on a 365 project.

I had to start mining my archives for things to post, which was alright at first.  Then I broke my ankle and needed surgery.  You probably know this, and maybe you are tired of hearing about it.  But it kept me from going out and shooting for a while.  I couldn’t drive until the end of the year, resulting in less field work, less shots of barns and prairies, a lot less of what I liked to shoot.

But I also got to go to some of our national parks, and shoot some nature.  It was something I hadn’t photographically explored, and I liked it.  The shot above is from a trip to Yosemite.  I was going to write something about the best way to be Ansel Adams is to not be Ansel Adams (to find your own voice), but that will have to wait.  It was one of the better things to come out of 365 year two.

365 started as one thing and changed into another.  It wasn’t always something I was 100% proud of, but I did it.  In two years, I didn’t miss a day, even the day I broke my ankle, or the day it was operated on.  After two years of posting every day, it’s going to be weird to not.  But I also think it’s necessary to move to the next phase of this whole photographic journey.

So what’s next?  I’ll touch on that tomorrow.  See you then.

11-10-16

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Day 315 / 680 –

This was shot in Yosemite National Park (map to the waterfall).  I love doing nature photography like this.  It is a chance to slow down and really look around, get away from the noise of the city (like the helicopter that has been buzzing overhead for the last hour or so), and appreciate the things we didn’t pave over.

Of course, there are a ton of nature photographers out there, many of them (most of them) better than I am.  They have the hours and days and years of practice put in.  I’m a weekend warrior in this sense.  They also often have cameras and lenses that are way above the capabilities of mine, but that doesn’t matter as much as we like to tell ourselves.  Yes, a $6,000 camera (like the one used by the current nature photographer of the year) and heavy and expensive lenses can produce better results, mostly in image quality and technical areas.  But I’m shooting mostly with a Sony a6000 and the lenses that came with it (and a manual 12mm super wide lens).  I think I do OK.

They say the camera doesn’t matter, and I think that’s a bunch of hooey.  Of course the camera matters, but it doesn’t mean everything.  The best camera is the one you have in your hand.  Go take some pictures.