365 Project update

So far so good with the 365 Project! I've only missed one day (January 3rd) and my excuse is that I hadn't decided to do the project until the 4th of Jan and alas, I hadn't taken a photo on the 3rd.

(To see the progress thus far, click the link at the top of the blog page entitled "365 Project-A photo a day")

I've decided that I'm going to try and either make each photo like a little story of what a particular day entailed for me, or what was the most interesting/significant/annoying thing I experienced about that day.

For example on day 7, it rained extremely heavily for about an hour this morning causing flash flooding across the city. But in the afternoon, the sun came out. I was therefore able to take my dog walking for the first time in days. Therefore the photo for January 7 shows my dog, Nelson, on our walk looking at a flooded creek near my house.

I used a shallow depth of field (5/f) to make Nelson the main focus of this image, resulting in the slightly blurred bridge/water. I shot in Aperture priority mode which resulted in the camera selecting a shutter speed of 1/500s. ISO was 200.

Because it was quite dull, the sky unfortunately isn't all that interesting and the brown muddy water is a bit yuck too. But, the whole point of this photo wasn't to take a landscape masterpiece, it was to document my day.

In photoshop, I increased the clarity, black point and upped the luminance/saturation of the red lead/collar to make it stand out and bring a splash of colour.

After publishing today's shot, I've also learnt that I will have to keep in mind the previous photos I've taken in this project - it's only day 7 and already I've included two of Nelson! I don't want one particular person/animal/type of shot to dominate my project. I realise there will be some recurring themes throughout the year but I will try and mix it up.

Project 365

To see the most up-to-date version of my Project 365, click the bar at the top of the blog page entiitled "365 Project - A photo a day"

WHAT
Project 365 is my attempt to take 1 photo a day for the whole year. I'm not sure how long I'll stay committed for, but I'm going to give it a go. Having said that, I've already missed one day (the 3rd of January) because I only decided to undertake this project on the 4th of Jan. Luckily, I'd taken some photos on the 1st and 2nd to fill in those days.

WHY
Many people undertake this challenge at the beginning of the year in an effort to use and learn more about their cameras and to train their eye to find a photo in any situation.

Being forced to take a photo each day, I know that some of them will be rubbish if I'm rushed or not really 'feeling' there's a photo to be found somewhere. But this will hopefully help me learn what to do better and encourage me to try out some different photographic techniques or camera settings.

It's also a good way to document my year (for which I have big expectations! :)

HOW
I've set a daily alarm on my phone at 2pm reminding me to take a photo each day. To try and stay motivated, I might also look at setting myself a weekly theme to focus my efforts more if I start to struggle for ideas and to try and photograph things I've never snapped before.

Here are my shots so far (apart from Jan 3rd) - they don't have a set theme yet.

01/01/2011

The above shot is of two of my friends at my New Year's Eve party, taken shortly after midnight (ie. January 1st). I used a shallow depth of field and focused on the bottles in front to blur the happy couple in the background.

02/1/2011

A misty, cloud covering hiking trail at Springbrook National Park, Gold Coast, Australia. My husband and I went hiking on this trail (Twin Falls circuit) as with the recent deluge of rain our state has been experiencing, we were desperate to venture outside while the rain held off!

The cloud actually made it difficult to focus the camera on autofocus mode, as it was getting confused by the swirling mist.

04/01/2011

This is a self portrait in the reflection of a hand dryer in the ladies toilets at my work. It was about 30 mins before taking this photo that I decided to embark on Project 365, hence the rather strange subject matter. This one was taken on my iPhone. I like how shiny the hand dryer is and the random pattern of brown tiles under it. As I said, I was a bit desperate for a photo at this point :)

05/01/2011 My dog, Nelson (a Labradoodle) 'helping' me with the gardening. I thought he looked very cute trying to hide his giant body behind the vines.

I used a large aperture to increase the shutter speed in the available light so that I could quickly fire off a series of shots and get his in focus as he was moving around sniffing things a fair bit.

Dog tired

WHAT

This is my dog, Nelson, having a lie down in his kennel. He's a 7 year old labradoodle and the first dog I've ever owned.

WHY

Why else do people take photos of their pets? Because they love them and want to capture their personality and antics. Plus, I'd recently been asked to photograph the pets of some friends and I wasn't 100% happy with the results, so I thought I'd practice.

HOW

Before venturing anywhere near Nelson, I had the camera already set to what I'd anticipated would work for the outside lighting conditions. This was on manual mode, aperture of 8 and a shutter speed of 1/13s (gauged from using the camera's light meter). This ensured that should he decide to suddenly move and ruin the cute pose, at least I'd have a fleeting chance of getting 1 or 2 quick shots in.

This shot was taken from just outside the back door to our house which is where Nelson's kennel is located. I had to move very slowly out the door with the camera in order to capture him lying down like this because usually as soon as I even look like going outside, Nelson comes flying out of his kennel excited and thinking he's going to get walked, fed or patted (or all three).

I focused on his eyes and got down very low so that I was at his level. I also used the side and floor of his kennel to frame the image.

I used aperture f/8 because this usually produces a good focal length and ensures most things are sharp and in focus. I've encounted problems previously using larger apertures (eg. f/6 and below) when photographing friend's pets with long noses - when you focus on the eyes at these larger apertures, the nose and mouth become soft/blurred and can ruin the shot as you're often trying to capture a dog's smiling mouth at the same sharpness as his eyes.

In the image above, Nelson's nose isn't 100% sharp, however I wasn't worried about that in this instance.

Because it was a very dull/rainy day, there wasn't much light available to produce a fast enough shutter speed for my liking. Therefore I increased the ISO to 320.

POST PRODUCTION

The image was firstly converted to greyscale in photoshop. I then made slight adjustments to the contrast, black point and clarity of the image.