This was the first week (I’m using the word ‘week’ loosely, just work with me here) in which I was genuinely happy with (almost) every single photo I took. In fact, this week includes one of my very favourite photos ever. (Not the oranges. That’s just my favourite for this post.)
So that’s nice!
Now that I’ve taken some of the pressure off—and since I’ve had fresh flowers on hand to play with—this project is fun.
I still don’t know what possessed me to try a 365 project in 2017. When I started, I was pretty sure it would turn out like the attempts I’d made before: three months in, I’d be taking the most boring snapshots in the world, simply to fulfil the obligation. I didn’t think that I’d make it through the year without getting bored or resentful, and I definitely didn’t think that the project would do as much for my photography in general as it did.
Were all my photos good? Of course not. I phoned in a bunch of them, even this last week. But I can see a marked difference between the photos I was taking in January, the ones I was taking in July, and the ones I’m taking now, and I’m really happy with how far I’ve come.
A big part of it, I’m sure, is just the fact that I was sharing the photos—the ones that I loved, and the ones that were, frankly, embarrassing. Getting some kind of feedback (whether it was full-on comments, or just a few likes) has done wonders for my confidence as a photographer, which in turn has pushed me to try a little bit harder with every photograph. (Or almost every photograph. Some days, I’m still lazy and uninspired.)
There’s a lot to be said for not creating art in a vacuum.
Now that this particular project is over, what’s next?
I’m going to keep taking a picture every day, and posting it to Instagram, but I’m not calling it an official 365 project. (I’ll keep posting the photos here, too, but I’m going to move to a monthly roundup, instead of weekly.)
The big problem I ran into this year was that the every-single-day aspect meant that sometimes I was taking pictures just to fulfil the obligation, and I wasn’t happy with the results. By the time November rolled around, I wanted something that was more of a creative challenge, but less of a chore.
In 2018, I’m going to give myself some leeway when I’m sick, or uninspired, or whatever. I’m still going to try for every day, but if I can manage at least five days a week, I’m going to call it a win. And I’m going to break the year down into smaller, more challenging projects, things that will push me either creatively or technically.
I don’t know what all of those projects are yet. I’ll probably limit myself to a single camera or lens for a month, and I’ll do a month of black-and-white, and I’ll find a few more things to do as the year goes on. (I’d also really like to work on my portraiture…. If you’re near Nova Scotia and might be interested, get in touch.)
I’m going to keep going. I’ve enjoyed this project too much to stop now.
Here they are: all the Project 365 photos that I haven’t been posting for the last little while!
I’m not going to try to say anything about them—there are too many, and there’s no real point. Some are really good, some are kind of terrible. The usual. Be sure to click through to the gallery: I went with a different layout this time around in order to save space—most of the photos aren’t actually in a square format.
I’m not going to get this far behind again. Trying to get back on track has been maddening.
I’m a day late posting this week’s roundup, I know. The last few days of the week were a low point, as far as inspiration goes, and it was a bit of a struggle to get myself motivated. (There are a handful of small chores involved in preparing the photos for a blog post—not to mention finding something to say about them—and I just couldn’t be bothered until today.)
However! This week does feature one of my favourite photos of this entire project-to-date. It might actually be one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken with my phone. And it was probably part of the reason I struggled with the rest of the week…. There are some days when I really don’t mind taking ok and uninspired photos, but I wanted to follow that picture with something as good or better, and it just wasn’t happening.
Still. I do really like the nail polish.
There were a lot of grey, gloomy days this week, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes, those days force me to get creative, and I actually end up with photos that I’m really happy with.
Of course, sometimes those days are just… difficult.
This is a first: this week, my daily photo project has produced multiple photographs that I’m genuinely happy with. Obviously, there were still a few days where inspiration failed me entirely, but that’s fine. The good photos more than make up for the bad and uninspired ones.
And, yeah: another picture of a loaf of bread. But I refuse to live in a world where homemade bread is considered too boring to photograph.
I’m back!
Sort of. I’m still really busy with NaNoWriMo (so busy), and I’m still processing my emotions from the US election (I sort of feel like I’m going to have something to say about that, but… I’m not sure. I might not be up to an entire post on the subject). But I’m slowly figuring out how to balance writing with everything else I want to do, and I figure it’s time to get back to work on this “weekly” project.
From a technical standpoint, this was a tricky one. I was able to manage it (the only post-processing I did here was the black and white conversion), but my camera is a little fussy about this particular technique; it took me a couple of days to actually get a shot I was happy with. (And there’s no way I’d be able to do it for anything other than a still life.)
Still, it was a fun experiment, and one I plan to revisit at some point.
At some point, I’ll have a few days in a row that aren’t dark and rainy, and I’ll be able to actually go outside to get the photographs I really want to make.
Until then, I’ll just keep wrestling with terrible indoor light to take mildly-interesting still life photos. (To be fair, I really like the light in this picture. It worked so much better in the camera than it did when I was actually looking at it. It’s just not the picture I’d planned for this prompt. But they never are, are they?)
I didn’t really expect the first photo of my 52-week project to be such a challenge. When I’d put together my list of prompts, I was careful about choosing things for the first few weeks that I knew I could do: prompts that I already had ideas for, so I wouldn’t find excuses to stop before I even started.
I had a few thoughts in mind for “fresh…” and, when the week came, it was obvious that none of them were really going to work. There was no crisp, new-fallen snow in the forecast. Nothing that symbolized a new year. I haven’t even bought a calendar yet. (I’m picky.)
So I was forced to improvise, and, in a way, I’m glad. I’m happy with the way the first photo of the project turned out. And even happier with some of the outtakes—they don’t quite fit the prompt as well as this one does (they’re darker and more… wintry, I suppose), but I really like them, and I’ll share them soon.
