Posts Tagged: project365
Trying to Re-Engage
No, the photo is not stretched horizontally. That’s just how they used to make ’em. And no, I didn’t pump up the saturation at all. Sometimes the light just does that. I don’t know why.
I fall further and further behind in dealing with my photographs. This, despite the fact that I am shooting far fewer photos lately. Of course, both of these facts are related to starting a new job and feeling the pressure of getting work done. Few walks around the neighborhood when I’m at work, bringing work home on occasion, studying up a bit, and various other tasks and projects make it difficult to do much writing or photography. For the last month or more, I’ve pulled some really late nights doing everything from getting taxes done to a spectacular, last-minute, marathon sprint to complete online traffic school. The late nights make me slower at work, which makes me bring work home, which leads to late nights, which,…
I believe, and I hope, the worst of it is now passed.
Similarly, I am also fabulously behind on both this daily post to the blog, and the project 365 group on flickr. I continue to feel a bit torn about both of these projects. I want to do both everyday. I really do. I want to be able to say I did it, and I want have the resulting output from participating in projects like these. But on the other hand, I think that it does not often make for very good or interesting results if one is always pressed for time. Does it make sense to just take a picture of anything at all and throw it up there just to meet the obligation to post something everyday? Does one get better by doing that? Does it make sense to write a few sentences in the most dry and mechanical way just to meet the arbitrary goal? I think that if one isn’t taking time to think about it, or attempt to practice a particular kind of shot, or whatever, then one is not communicating anything or improving one’s skills.
As for photos, since there is plenty of work to do catching up on processing and archiving photos already taken, I am going to solidly re-commit to uploading something everyday, but the photo will not necessarily have been taken on that day. I took this photo on April 29th, but posted it to the group for the 28th. I had nothing on the 28th. Zero. And yet, I got a handful of fun shots on the 29th. Some days are just like that. And while there will be a photo representing each day, there may be multiple photos in my submission to the group taken on the same day. That’s a clear violation of the group rules, but it’s the only way to keep with it at this point. And I’d rather put up photos I actually like than put up photos taken on 365 different days but that I mostly hate.
As far as the blog goes, I hope to get back at it and write about something everyday–about something other than why I’m not writing.
Is it cheesing out?
Fog on Hwy 132 © neo serafimidis 2010
In addition to committing to a projet to post every day on this blog (I know, I know, that Vegas trip got me two days behind. But I’ll catch up!), I have been participating in a post-a-day project over on flickr as well. Needless to say, it is pretty hard to get all this in, especially after a painful 2 hours working with the kid on his homework. And I really didn’t have an opportunity to shoot anything today.
So, I was reading a discussion thread over on the flickr project 365 group where a poster shared his strategy for deflating the pressure of getting something up every day. That was to shoot the same object every morning as a backup shot in case no better shot gets taken that day. That way there is no pressure in completing the daily assignment. I was about to start employing this myself, with a little queasiness that I wouldn’t feel too good about just putting up a dispassionate shot of something sitting on my desk every once in a while.
Then I saw another strategy that I like even better and I can combine with another task I have to do anyway. This strategist points out that her goal in participating is to get post-production practice in as well as clicking the shutter. So, she’ll sometimes post a photo that was taken previously, but that was processed on that day.
I realized this would work well for me. I too, have thousands of photos that I have not processed yet. I also have a huge amount of file backup work to do. So, if I don’t have a newly shot photo to put for a given day, I will process an untouched photo from the current batch that is getting backed up. That way, I get some processing practice in, and some processing done, and get back to burning backups of all my files. Whew!
Here is the original unprocessed version of the shot found I rediscovered today while digging back through for the backup task.
Everyday
Fire on a winter evening.
I may be headed for a train wreck, or at least another large public failure. I’ve noticed recently that I have really slacked off taking photos. I still have a few regular things I’m doing, but the maniacal, camera-always-in-hand behavior has been tapering steeply away. So, when Darren mentioned to me yesterday that he was joining a Project 365 group on flickr, I knew right away that I needed that, too. This is a group where one takes one picture and posts it every day for a year. It might sound easy, but it’s a tall order. I know there will be many, many days where I won’t feel inspired or energetic enough to shoot, process and post.
So today Darren sent me the link to the particular group he had in mind (there are several on flickr and elsewhere), and I joined. And being the anal retentive sort, I really wanted to start the project on January 1, so I scrambled to see what I had over the last couple days so that I could catch up and get going. By a stroke of sheer luck, I had something from the first two days of the year.
The first shot above is a totally random shot of the fire at a little New Year’s Eve dinner party of neighborhood parents who were not going to make it to any of the usual hipster spots in SF to celebrate. Ah, parenthood. Thanks Bea and Steve. It was fabulous to be included.
Bottling the 2008 Cabernet
The second shot is from a Sunday afternoon wine making session of our little winemaking group. That’s where Darren told me about his project 365 intentions. Thanks for the tip, Darren! And thanks for trading off corking the bottles; that’s hard on the lower back. Anyway, in this photo Sarah and Ruta’s arm are filling bottles with the 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that the group made before we joined.
Telephone Pole and Shopping Carts
Finally, the third shot is from a shoot I did for the albany.patch.com feature I get to do, “Where in Albany…“. I’d tell you more about this particular shot, but I’d end up giving away the answer to this week’s play. I can’t do that until someone has guessed it. All I can say is that I serendipitously ran into my friends Emily and Ken as they were leaving a restaurant and I was wandering the streets looking for inspiration. Ken and I ended up standing there talking for a bit, and after awhile some other people came out of the restaurant. Standing around with a largish camera on a tripod often invites questions (sometimes confrontational ones!) and that’s how I ended meeting a couple other working photographers, including Chris Fuzi.
But I haven’t yet said what the risk in all this is.
It’s this. Once I got home and finished processing some shots, posting my albany.patch shot, and my flickr Project 365 posts, I happened to read an article on Mashable about WordPress putting out a challenge to bloggers to commit to posting everyday (or every week) in 2011.
Well, I can tell you that the drop-off in my blog posts has been bothering me for longer than the drop-off in photographing. So, now I’m committed to blogging everyday. That’s TWO 365 commitments, which is nuts. Because if there is one thing you can count on, it’s that I have no follow through. Naturally, combining the two and posting on the blog about the photo of the day over on flickr has already occurred to me, and this post is essentially the first one to take that approach. But still…
So, there it is. Check in regularly so you know when to start berating me publicly for flaking out!
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