365 Project

12-30-16

by

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.

12-03-16

by

dsc05640-edit_15k

Day 338 / 703 – This almost didn’t get taken.  I was pretty stressed for time, and we had to get back to San Francisco so Meg could get to work on time.  A 4 hour drive in California into a major city can easily turn into a nightmare.

Luckily, Meg was smart enough to stop.  We took a few minutes to roam away from the car and this was one of the results.

The point here is pretty simple: good things happen when you take the time.  It’s something I have to remind myself.  When I’m on a trip, I want to move on to the next thing, I want to make sure I maximize the things I see, rather than take the time to do it right, or to do it well.

Time is the friend of the photographer.  Whether it’s taking the time to think, to pause, to consider about your shot, to get the settings just right, or even showing up at the right time, time is your friend.  Even the ‘value’ of a photograph seems to go up the further from the time it was taken we get.

Almost all of my shots that I like the most, I took a little more time to get that shot.  I didn’t just raise the camera, shoot, and move on.  I have posted plenty of shots here that I rushed, that I pressed my time.  And still, sometimes I rush things more than I need.

Sometimes you have to.  Like the time I took a picture of a cow in Florida, then heard a shot fired.  The cows heard it too, as they started running.  That’s a good time to move on quickly.

I need to remind myself to slow down, that the time spent is worth it.  And you would think that, with all the times it’s worked out, I wouldn’t need to remind myself.  But I do.  I think a lot of work is rushed these days, and we aren’t giving our best to what we make.  We aren’t giving our work the time it needs to truly be great, or failing that, better.

More on this topic soon.