It’s been a few days over a month (34 days to be exact) since I started my “A Picture A Day” blog. My overriding goal is to become a better photographer, and I’m definitely on the path to get there.
Here’s what I’ve done and learned so far:
The pressure of having to deliver a good image every day has caused me to be much more aware of my surroundings. I look around, I look up, I look down, I’m more aware of colors, lighting and textures. This has been wonderful, and something I did not anticipate.
I look forward to traveling even more now because I know it will bring new opportunities.
About a quarter of the time I don’t like what I’ve shot during the day (or I haven’t shot anything), and I have to get creative in the evening to get something done. This isn’t necessarily bad – and the output of many of those days is among my better work – but I do dread those times.
On other days I have multiple pictures that I really like that are very different from each other, so I just have to choose my favorite. I put the other shots in a folder as inspiration for days when I might get stuck. I’ve also shot a number of things that I know I can do better, or need the right environment to be done well. I also save those as ideas for future shoots.
There are six pictures I am really proud of and seven that I don’t like that much. That leaves 21 somewhere in the middle.
I’ve attended a few meetings of the Palo Alto Camera Club, and will be joining this week. The group meets weekly and brings in outside judges to review members’ work in a competition format, along with presentations by members about technique and technology. It’s very refreshing to learn in a live environment.
I’m also embracing Flickr. I post my images there, but more importantly I have learned a lot by looking at other people’s work. For example, after I did my lava lamp shoot I compared it to other lava lamp shots on flickr. I’ve also learned about camera tossing which I’m planning to apply soon.
For the first 34 days I shot 1941 pictures, or almost 60 per day. Photo management is a big deal. I started out using Picassa (from Google) which is great, but I’m now using Adobe Lightroom which is a more serious application for photographers. It has powerful features for managing, rating and picking images, and handles most of the image manipulation that I need to do.
Speaking of image manipulation… Pretty much every image ends up with some amount of color correction and contrast enhancement. I also sharpen most of the images and do some cropping. Otherwise I have done very little touch up. I am also relearning the beauty of black and white images.
21 images were shot with my Olympus Stylus 770SW (a 7 megapixel waterproof point-and-shoot) and 12 were shot with my Canon 10D SLR. The Olympus is with me all the time, so convenience rules. The Canon shoots much better images, but its use is more intentional.
I have been geotagging images that weren’t taken at my house. Since neither of my cameras has a built in GPS, I use Picassa and Google Earth to get the coordinates and embed them in the EXIF data of the image. (This means the longitude and latitude of where the image was shot is saved with the image file.) I include the data with the blog entries and will be adding a map with the images on it to the site at some point.
Finally, I created a calendar version of the images that is a great visual diary for me. Another perk I didn’t expect.
Well, I’m in Boulder right now and about to head out to dinner. I hope there’s a nice shot out there!