Caz Photo Blog

I can’t believe I’ve actually finished Project 366, and not missed a day. It came close from time to time, but I always managed to get a picture. I’ll be the first to admit that some of them have been a little “under par”, but that’s pretty much like life, isn’t it?

Anyway, for those of you who have shared the journey during 2008, or those who might feet inspired to try your own Project 365 during 2009, here’s a tip per month, which I’ve learned from completing the project:

1. Always Carry A Camera With You!

It might sound obvious, but it’s definitely true. Even if I didn’t have my SLR with me, I would invariably have my Ixus 850 IS compact in my bag when I was out and about. You never know where you’ll see that picture which really makes your day. And “the ones that got away” are always the best!

[Day #255 - In The Eye Of The Beholder . I took my camera with me to a business networking event and managed to take this rather attractive peacock feather during the lunch break.]

2. You’re Not Always Going To Take A Masterpiece

But that doesn’t matter! Some days are great, others you can barely manage to drag the camera out of its case. Life has its ups and downs, so just accept that if you’ve taken a bad picture one day, the next is another opportunity for you to do better. And some days, I’ve actually chosen a photograph which best represents the day I’ve had, rather than the one with most photographic merit.

[Day #246 - Lights In The Sky . This was undoubtably the nadir of my year. It's rubbish. But it's the only image I took on 2nd September, for whatever reason. So it just had to do!]

3. There’s No Such Thing As The Wrong Weather

Don’t let a bit of fog, rain, wind or snow put you off. Take the camera out anyway. It will often give your photos a great atmosphere.

[Day #348 - Citypoint Evening . I had taken other pictures during the day, but decided to bring the camera along when I went out to a party in the evening. The rain on the streets, plus the people with brolly, brought the scene to life.]

4. Don’t Panic About Getting A Shot Early In The Day

In the early days of the project, I used to worry about getting a photo early in the day, or was afraid I might forget to take a picture. So by all means, take an “insurance” shot if that makes you feel comfortable, but don’t decide straight away that that will be it. Always keep an open mind for opportunities which may arise later in the day.

[Day #224 - After Hours. This was taken in the late evening as I was on my way home from a meeting at the local village hall. Nothing else had inspired me during the day, but this is what I saw when I happened to poke my head around the door to the main meeting room.]

5. Make The Time To Make A Picture

How often do we think “I haven’t got time for that”? And how many times do we find ourselves making time for things we want to do, rather than things we should be doing? If you can afford half an hour to watch a trashy soap in the evening when you get home from work, you can surely spare 10 minutes during your day to make a picture! It’s just a question of getting into the habit of it, and allowing yourself a little time for creativity. You’ll feel better for it!

[Day #3 - Coffee Break. Even in a busy schedule, there's always time for a short break. Use it to think about making a picture while you enjoy your coffee.]

6. Look At Familiar Things In A New Way

It’s easy to see the same old things day after day, and never appreciate them. So take some time to look at your familiar surroundings in a different way. Household objects photographed from an unusual angle or in different lighting can often make good subjects. Go for the abstract, or home in on a pattern. If you can use a macro lens or setting on your camera, you will often see the world in an intriguing way.

[Day #49 - Enigma IV. This sits on my drive every day and I largely ignore it until I need to go somwhere. But add a touch of frost and a macro lens - all of a sudden, it doesn't look like the bonnet of my car anymore.]

7. It’s All About Light

Photography is all about light. If you can catch some sun or dramatic lighting, it can bring a scene to life. But in most locations, the sun doesn’t shine all the time, so if you have a dull day outside, you can always turn your hand to a bit of table-top photography. It doesn’t require expensive lighting or props. Try pointing a desk lamp at an acute angle across some crayons and see what happens:

[Day #89 - Exploring Orange. Part of my mini-project, Exploring Colour, which I undertook during March and April. A simple set up - 4 crayons, a paper clip and some coloured paper.]

8. Right Place, Right Time

By being observant, having your camera with you at all times and always being on the lookout for pictures, you will often find that you are in the right place at the right time.

This, of course, is no accident, but it can seem like it at times. You might be in the right spot to take a wonderful landscape just as the sun pokes out from clouds, for instance. Just like me on Day #22, when I was walking St. Peter’s Way close to home. Or Day #40 when I was walking in the woods and spotted a horse racing gig pelting towards me through the mud…

[Day #104 - Rainbow Pews. Having taken some shots in Dedham which were rather routine, I stopped off at West Bergholt Church to have a look round inside. The light had gone, the clouds were gathering. Except for a fleeting 10 seconds when I happened to be in this spot in the church. Suddenly, the sun came out and shone through the stained glass windows in the nave and onto the pews below. I managed two exposures before the light was gone for the rest of the day.]

9. Make A List Of Things To Try

Inspiration seems to come and go on a whim, I find. So during the year, whenever I thought of a good subject to photograph, I would add it to my list of things to try. This was mainly used for days at home when the light was poor, or inspiration didn’t strike. I found it useful, especially if there were things I particularly wanted to attempt which I hadn’t done before. Photographing water bubbles was one:

[Day #29 - Enigma III. Bubbles on water, with coloured wrapping paper underneath. If you would like to read more about the setup, here's how it was done.]

10. Learn A New Technique/About Your Camera

Whether you are a newcomer to photography or have been taking pictures for years, there’s always something new to learn. And if you had a new camera for Christmas and are not sure what all the buttons do, why not take some pictures to help you experiment and find out? Perhaps take the same subject with different apertures, shutter speeds or ISO settings and see what difference they make. Use different lenses to change the perspective of your pictures. Or there are things you can do in the post-process to make your images stand out from the mundane.

[Day #58 - Signs Of Spring. I decided to experiment with this simple compact camera shot and used the Orton Effect to give it a softer, more gentle feeling.]

11. Explore Your Local Area

Have you ever thought “There’s nothing to photograph round where I live”? So did I, but then I bought myself an OS 1:25,000 scale wall map centred on my house and drew a 5 mile radius on it. My aim has been to explore as much of that circle as possible during the year. I’ve found some amazing little gems which I never knew existed, largely because I was complacent about living in the area. So take a look yourself, and you might be pleasantly surprised as to what you can find! If you have a dog, take it for a walk out of your usual patch and explore some new footpaths. I’ve also found some really amazing locations since starting to go geocaching. It’s a great excuse to get out and about and visit places you might have otherwise overlooked.

[Day #307 - After Constable. The Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation runs east from Chelmsford to the Blackwater estuary at Maldon. The towpath is a great place to explore. I found this beautiful scene one day whilst out doing some geocaching.]

12. Do It With Friends!

I really would not have completed my Project366 without the help, support and feedback from all the great folks on Flickr. Encouragement from them meant I found the will to keep going on dreary days. They have posted some truely inspirational pictures, and having met a fair few of them in person, they’re also a great bunch of people. You know who you are! So if you’re just starting your own 365 odyssey, join a group on Flickr, post your pictures and get commenting. You will soon make some wonderful contacts and start interesting conversations.

[Day #195 - Wipeout. Some of the 366 2008 group met up in London one July weekend to chew the fat, enjoy a pint and - eventually - take some pictures together on the South Bank. This one was made with them.]

A few Statistics

For those of you that like numbers, here are some stats:

Pictures made at home: 127/366 = 34.7%
Pictures made within 5 miles of home: 98/366 = 26.8%
Pictures made further away: 141/366 = 38.5%

Pictures made with Ixus 850 IS Compact: 89/366 = 24%
Pictures made with DSLR (EOS 30D/300D): 277/366 = 76%

And in case you care, here are my favourite and least favourite shots from each month:

* Pic of the Year
** Dud of the Year!

Final Thoughts

First and foremost - Don’t Give Up!

If you find you missed a day, take a “placeholder” picture and pick up your camera again the next day. I managed all 366, but some of our group missed one or two during the year. But they still participated in the spirit of it.

I’ve also found that it’s a wonderful way to keep a diary. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. And looking back over the Visual Archives, I find it’s so easy to remember what I was doing just by looking at the thumbnails, even if I don’t read the whole entry.

Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve decided to keep going during 2009. It’s addictive

December was another varied month for the weather, my travels and images. We had plenty of cold frosty mornings again. This shot [left] was the result of me trying to clear the frost off the car windscreen before setting out for a meeting on Day #338. Always leave yourself enough time to take the unexpected image!

The first weekend in December saw me head to Liverpool for the city’s first BarCamp. Like Sheffield the previous weekend, it’s a place I hadn’t visited for years and I regret having left it as long.

During the Saturday afternoon, a group of us had a walk around the city centre to find some geocaches and have a bit of a photowalk. Here [right] are the others acting lairy with a big 20 we found on a side street.

We walked back to the venue along the banks of the Mersea, and were just in time for a wonderful sunset across the water, which I chose for Day #341’s image. But the runner up was definitely this image of  the iconic Liver Building, bathed in warm evening light:

[Liver Building in the fantastic evening light]

I was doing some Christmas shopping at the Battlesbridge Antiques centre on Day #354, which was beautifully sunny. The long shadow cast by the bell [left] almost made it for pic of the day.

Christmas itself was fairly mundane for pictures. The weather wasn’t great where I was, although Boxing Day was sunny but very cold. A few days after Christmas I went geocaching again with fellow addict Alistair. We had trips around Little Waltham, Maldon and Hylands Park. These last few are near misses from Day #363, #364 and #365:

[Left] Little Waltham [right] Heybridge Basin

[Above] Hylands Park

Another month has rolled by, and the weather was, rather predictably, autumnal. Plenty of leaves on the ground to photograph, and murky, damp coniditions. But the sun did poke its head from behind the clouds from time to time, as my November shots show.

After my experiments with light on Day #308, I visited a friend’s studio a few days later, as we wanted to try and make some images to use on cards for Christmas. The idea was to make some Christmas Trees, Holly and other festive shapes with the torch. And photograph a flaming pudding. But it was all a disaster! Nothing worked out terribly well, and this [right] was the only vaguely usable shot from the whole sorry shoot! Ah well, we had a laugh.

Day #317 was a wonderfully sunnay day, and I took the opportunity to nip out at lunchtime for a few pictures. The image on the left was a strong contender for image of the day. It’s a statue of notable Essex Cricketer Graham Gooch, which stands in the garden of some offices close by the County Ground in Chelmsford. I loved the silhouetted shape and was quite happy even though you can’t see any details of the statue at all.

Like many areas of the countryside which I have explored around Chelmsford, there are also lots of roads and alleyways in the town itself which I’ve passed regularly but never really stopped to look at. It’s one thing I love about the Photo A Day project, as it encourages you to explore your surroundings - any excuse for a different picture!

Anyway, back to the weather. It was pretty grim on Day #322, but even if it is, or has been, raining there are still pictures to be had. This flower [above] almost made it for pic of the day. I liked the droplets of water on the petals and leaves. But in the end, I decided to go for the more sombre mood of Boreham House.

I had more luck with the light on Day #330 whilst exploring Danbury Churchyard. The image which made it for pic of the day was more out of its sentiment (“Carpe Diem”) than being the best photo, but this one [below] showed some great raking shadows and texture on the surface of another grave:

The end of the month saw me return to the city of Sheffield, where I went to University, but hadn’t been back since 1995. I really don’t know why I’d left it so long, but having spent a wonderful weekend there, I’ll certainly be visiting again more quickly than the last time!

The city has seen much in the way of regeneration since I was there, most notably the fountains and concourse leading up from the Station, which always used to be a bit of a dump, to be honest. It was foggy for a lot of the weekend, but for an hour or so around Saturday lunchtime. I spent an enjoyable half hour pottering around and taking many images from the vacinity. I’ll leave you with three:

[left] Watching The Cascade and [right] Overflow [above] A Foggy Evening By The Cathedral

On and off, we had some reasonable weather during October, if my monthly pictures are anything to go  by. There were also bad days, but these were a few images which could have been photo of the day:

Don’t you love the way the light caught the carving on this headstone in Sandon Churchyard [left] on Day #275? This bright red Acer leaf [right] was a strong contender on Day #288 as I pottered around in my garden.

I’ve also been doing a lot of Geocaching during October, which gives me the perfect excuse to visit locations nearby. I always take the camera with me and have often got a great photo of the day out of the expedition. I’ve been back to some places I know well, and visited others which otherwise, I would not have bothered with.

This lovely image of a wooden viaduct over the Blackwater [left], just south of Witham is a case in point. Sure, if you look on a map, it says there’s a viaduct there. But it gives no clue what a great location it is until you visit. Apparently, the viaduct is of national importance and is one of only a few wooden ones left in the country.

I found these thirsty cows [right] lurking by the Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation during a caching trip. They looked at me. I looked at them. Then we both minded our own business!

September was a busy month! The first weekend was spent down in Brighton, staying with friends and going to dConstruct08, then BarCamp Brighton3. A very enjoyable trip, despite the weather. My friend Bea cooked a lovely lunch when I arrived. That nearly made it on Day #248.

I’m always a sucker for a bit of red, so when I came across a lovely pillar box [right] one day whilst out walking, I was tempted to take its picture.

One Sunday morning (Day #264), I found myself walking through the City on my way to an Accessibility conference in Shoreditch. The light catching the sides of the building in this courtyard near Liverpool Street [left] caught my eye, and was only just beaten to Picture of the Day by the wonderful Snail I found on the pavement a few yards further up the road!

I like Sundays in the City, as you can often wander round freely without over-zealous security guards fobbing you off if you have a large camera round your neck. And there’s plenty of time to compose your pictures without unwanted people wandering around getting in the way!

I didn’t do a lot of walking locally during the “summer”, such as it was, but have started to get out and about again a bit more with the approach of autumn. This massive fungus [right] was one I found on the side of a tree in Galleywood. It was quite spectacular.

The month ended as it had begun, with another BarCamp. This time in Richmond at the swanky offices of eBay. I went for a walk as dusk was falling by the Thames and caught this group of boats and ducks [left]  in the warm evening light.