This was one of those weeks when I had lots of ideas, but none that seemed to work out the way I hoped. In the end, I was able to combine a lucky encounter with a ladybug with my recent experiments with hand lettering, and get something that… I don’t entirely hate. It’s not perfect (I was more interested in meeting my deadline this week than hitting “perfection”), it’s barely even finished, but I like it. (I like the original photo a bit more, though. I’ll put it on Instagram soon.)
I know. This whole “weekly photo” project hasn’t exactly been a weekly thing lately. Specifically, I still haven’t gotten around to doing weeks 26 (motion) or 28 (triptych).
I’ll be going into more detail about what’s been going on in Monday’s “sketchbook” post: basically, I’m still in the creative doldrums, but slowly managing to find my way out. In the meantime, I have ideas for those two photos (and I’ve actually taken one of the three pictures for “triptych”). I was able to tackle this week’s prompt on time—and I quite like the result. And I have a preliminary idea for next week’s prompt.
I’m going to finish this project. I won’t be hitting every single prompt right on time, and I’m ok with that.
I didn’t expect that this project would get more difficult as the weather got nicer, but there you go. I’ll be getting around to last week’s prompt (“motion”) as soon as I can.
In the meantime, I was thrilled to see this prompt show up. I shouldn’t need an excuse to play with my Lomo’Instant—I love it, and I really want to use it more than I do. As far as mechanics go, it’s the simplest camera I own (that works), and the one I’m least comfortable using. I need practice, so I’m not always relying on happy accidents like this one.
Sometimes we all need a little push, and I really appreciated having a reason to just go outside in the sun and take Instax pictures of flowers this week.
This is another one of those times when I really should have thought things through a little better when I was putting together the list of prompts. It really would have made more sense to schedule this particular prompt in spring or (better) fall, when there’s still something interesting to take photos of, but the golden hour happens at a more reasonable time.
As it is, I scheduled this prompt for the longest days of the year, when the golden hour is either insanely early or late enough in the evening that it interferes with other plans. To get this picture, I had to be out of the house by 5:15. In the morning. On a Saturday.
So… that happened. A few weeks later than I’d planned, but it happened.
I almost should have expected it: just as I approach the half-way point in this project, I start to lose all momentum. I’m not feeling inspired, or particularly motivated, or even all that interested right now.
I’m not happy about it, but I hit these creative lulls occasionally. I’ll get through it—I always do—but in the meantime, at least this project gives me something to focus on.
More on Monday.
I suppose it kind of makes sense to go back to the photo diary style photos for a prompt like “Documentary.”
This was harder to do than I expected. First, I didn’t really have too much going on this week that was worth documenting (at least not in photos), and the weather hasn’t really inspired me to go out and find something. But I did eventually manage one day that was dry enough to get some gardening done (finally!) and find some inspiration.
The second problem was trying to get the gardening done and take photos at the same time.
I might revisit this prompt in the future.
Back to struggling with finding inspiration for the prompts that are vague and open to interpretation. For a while, I considered going seriously literal with this one (oh, look, here’s something balanced precariously on its edge), and I considered posting one of the pictures from last month’s photo excursion (which is a better photograph in general, and probably works better for the prompt anyway), but in the end, I decided to stick with the spirit of the challenge.
With luck, I’ll do better next week.
Sometimes I struggle with the prompts that leave a lot of room for creative interpretation; if I have too many ideas, or too many options, I tend to get hung up on finding the right idea and dismiss anything that isn’t absolutely perfect.
So this week should have been a challenge.
It wasn’t.
I knew weeks ago that, for this prompt, I wanted to do something that felt like a road movie. Which… ok, yeah. That could have been a challenge, given that I don’t drive and I don’t have easy access to a lot of the landscapes that I associate with road movies. (There are times when I get really annoyed with the lack of desert around here.) But I had a few different ideas in mind, and I was able to spend some time figuring out the logistics.
And in the end, it didn’t matter. The timing worked out perfectly, and, while this isn’t one of the pictures I imagined when I was thinking about this prompt, I think it works.
Though it might still be better with a desert.
Things are starting to get interesting again: the weather’s warm enough that I want to go outside occasionally, the trees are starting to fill out, and there’s finally—finally!—some colour. It’s not just all dull grey and brown.
And just when this is all happening, I’m falling back in love with black & white.
(Well. I’ve been falling back in love with black & white for a while. Not that I ever wasn’t in love with it. But the last few weeks it’s turned into a minor obsession.)
I don’t mind, really—there’s still more to take pictures of, and more colour means more interesting contrast, even when it’s in black & white—I just find it kind of funny.
This is another slightly-late photo, I know. But I’m only late posting it. I took it during the week this prompt was assigned. (So, last week.) It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and while I took a lot of photos, I’m only now managing to sit down and go through them. And this particular photo required a little bit of improvisation in the editing process—nothing too dramatic, but this is a slightly tricky prompt. There was math involved. I’m not a fan of math, even if I did memorize the Fibonacci sequence when I was eight.
Expect more (including the response to this week’s prompt) over the next week or so.
It’s a good thing that, with a bit of manipulation, the same light that’s so perfect for ‘Chiaroscuro’ also works for ‘Backlighting.’ Otherwise, I might’ve been running a backlog for a few weeks while I caught up.
I know that I’ve been doing a lot of indoor still-life stuff lately. (Or cat pictures.) But the weather is slowly starting to improve, and I’m slowly starting to feel like, you know, going outside on occasion. I’ve got plans to get out a couple times over the next week, specifically to take pictures, and I’ve got a few prompts coming up in the next few weeks that will require venturing outdoors, (mostly) regardless of weather or motivation.
Basically, I’m running out of excuses. 🙂 (I’m also kind of cursing myself for some of these upcoming prompts—I’d say I don’t know what I was thinking when I put together the list, but I do know. I wanted to challenge myself. Well. I’m getting my wish.)
