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This year I will be mostly... taking a photo every day, and posting it up here for you all to see and comment on if you feel inclined (please do). It's not an original idea, I stole it off a friend and many other people are doing the same as I speak, but I thought it seemed like a great idea to get used to my new toy, my Canon Eos 500D with Tamron 18-250mm Macro lens - my first digital SLR.

A lot of sites online talk about 'project 365' where people are encouraged to take a photo every day, but while their take on it is to create a personal history of the photographer, I wanted to make it a bit more abstract, more about the world around me. So this isn't meant to be a photo diary of my life, I am striving for each photo to be 'good' because of its artistic and technical merit, not because it's personal to me. Having said that personal subject matter will inevitably creep in as inspiration, but that's allowed, the book I'm reading claim that "every picture we take is merely a self-portrait of our inner psyche"!

I had a think of a couple of ideas for themes and settled on 'moods'. Then I was hit by indecision as to what to do if I take a photo I like and want to upload as my daily snap, but it doesn't fit the theme. So I have decided that the theme is just for inspiration rather than as a criteria, the photos can be of anything. That way I get the most flexibility of what to upload, and still have a muse.

While I'll be taking photos every day, I'll only upload them every few days, so keep checking back. I'm not anticipating the photos to be groundbreaking (at least not to start with!), the whole point is to improve so I won't be great initially. But I'll still try my best which will hopefully keep it interesting. Please feel free to add whatever comments you like (hopefully constructive!) as that will help me as much as the process of actually taking a photo a day, I will endeavour to reply to them all.

For my trip reports blog see http://fidgetsadventures.blogspot.com


Monday, 9 January 2012

Sunday 1st January 2012

At the start of 2011, I set myself the challenge of taking a photo every day, and I succeeded! I was quite strict with myself, and tried as much as possible to take each photo during that day. A couple of times the photos were taken just after midnight, and a couple of times I forgot altogether but always had a photo of something even if it was a mobile phone photo of a broken banjo pick never destined for public viewing, which I'd use instead of taking something better a day late.

I really enjoyed this project and got a lot of satisfaction from it as well as learning lots. The aim was to ensure that I kept my photography varied instead of using my new camera to take the same kind of photos again and again, and it certainly fulfilled this. I found interest in fields I would never have otherwise known about, such as insect macrophotography. I was so pleased with my photography I set up a company and have had an ehibition and produced 2012 calendars for which I've had great feedback.

Having said this, I am not going to continue the photo-a-day into a new year as it was really time intensive, and many of my other interests suffered as a result. Also towards autumn I felt that my it was hindering me rather than helping... the things I wanted to photograph required more time to prepare for and plan, and I didn't have time to concentrate on. Nevertheless, it was never boring and some evenings at home when I didn't have any ideas and thought I'd exhausted what my house has to offer I still came up with something unexpected that I was proud of, this being the example that sticks in my head. Now though I look forward to having time to built on the areas that now interest me. Rest assued that even without daily blog updates I am still very much enthused by my photography and will still be working on ideas, keep your eye on my website for updates.

I've added a 'popular' posts widget on the right hand side so that you can see a taster of what I managed to produce. Underneath that is the tag list which is useful for browsing and searching, followed by the archive.

Thanks to all my followers for their support, and anyone who has added comments. I'll leave you with a bonus photo from New Year's Day (just), of the firework celebration in Zillertal, Austria. At almost exactly the stroke of midnight fireworks erupted all the way along the valley and up the hillside, and lasted for about half an hour, brilliant!


42mm, 30s, f/22, ISO 100
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2 comments:

  1. Mo9 January 2012 at 22:08

    It was a great idea for a project and you executed it brilliantly. Been good looking at the results from time to time. And I am looking at "transitory fragile beauty" as I type. Well done, Sarah.

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  2. Sarah Clough9 January 2012 at 22:10

    Thank you!

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