{"id":3560,"date":"2010-01-20T14:45:06","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T19:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=3560"},"modified":"2010-01-20T15:54:40","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T20:54:40","slug":"project-365-fini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/20\/project-365-fini\/","title":{"rendered":"Project 365: Fini!"},"content":{"rendered":"

H<\/span>oly crap, I did it<\/a>! <\/p>\n

I’m not sure that I was convinced, back when I launched <\/a>this project a year ago, that I really expected to actually finish it. And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve learned.<\/p>\n

A year ago, I was using my Nikon dSLR mostly in the program modes. I didn’t know what bokeh was, and I’d never heard of TtV photography. I had a passing understanding of the basics of photography — shutter speed vs aperture vs ISO, depth of field, rule of thirds, exposure compensation, etc etc etc — but I rarely consciously employed them and even more rarely pushed their boundaries or deliberately ignored them in wondering what the result would be. I never mucked about with my camera settings. I thought using Photoshop made images less “true” and never post-processed any of my images save to correct egregious errors. I was shy about pointing my camera at anything but the most obvious photographic subjects in public, and would never dreamed of approaching a stranger and asking them if I could photograph them. I’d never shot in RAW and posted all my images in straight-out-of-the-camera colour. I didn’t know what EXIF data, rear-curtain shutter, tilt-shifting, hot shoes, photoshop actions or vignetting were. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d posted a photo to a group on Flicrk, or made a comment, or received a comment. <\/p>\n

I’ve come a long way, baby! I’ve had more than a dozen photos “Explored” by Flickr, I’ve had a photo featured as the “Photo of the Day” by a large group, and I’ve been asked for permission to use my images on a few websites. My 365 project was featured on CBC Radio at the half-way point last July, and I’ve even sold some of my images. Who woulda guessed it?! Mostly, though? I learned to love taking pictures. And, damn, I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it! <\/p>\n

When I started the 365 project, I had only the vaguest idea of what I wanted from it. I imagined I’d take a snapshot every day of the boys, or things around the house, or the places I went during the day, and every couple of days I’d throw them up on Flickr and that would be it. I had no idea that within a month or two, I’d have raised my own personal bar so high that I would drive myself crazy for the rest of the year trying to live up to it. A snapshot would simply not suffice. Not content to take just any picture, suddenly I had to take a good <\/em>picture — and the definition of “good” was a sliding scale. I blame and thank the members of the 365 Community almost exclusively for this. More than just a place to dump pictures, the 365 Community is an amazing collection of really first-rate photographers and super-nice people, and had I not been welcomed into the group early in the project, I imagine things would have turned out much differently. Not only did they support and encourage me with comments and feedback, but they inspired me to do better each time I perused their photostreams. <\/p>\n

And then, of course, there’s you, my bloggy peeps. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to know that a few of you started your own version of a 365 project because of me, and the comments and e-mails I received from people who said they were inspired to pick up a camera because of my pictures — dozens of them, over the year — is truly an honour.<\/p>\n

If you’re considering starting your own 365 project, here’s my advice for you: go for it! You’ve got nothing to lose (except maybe a few hundred hours) and everything to gain. I had no idea how hard it would be, but I also had no idea how rewarding it would be. I knew I would get a few pictures I loved and would capture in pictures the minutiae that I love to capture in words on the blog, but I had no idea I’d learn so much, meet such amazing people, and have such an amazing body of work to look back upon.<\/p>\n

The best and worst part about a 365 project is that no matter how awful your picture of the day might be, in your own estimation, there’s always tomorrow. And no matter how worth of a National Geographic cover you may think your latest image, you’ve got to start over again the next day.<\/p>\n

Out of more than 16,000 shutter clicks (!!) since January 20, 2009, here are my top ten favourites:<\/p>\n

I think this is my fave of the year. I love everything about this picture — the hand, the way the pear seems to be reaching for Lucas, the reflection in the table, the depth of field, the back lighting. <\/p>\n

\"270:365<\/a><\/p>\n

Fun and silly, but eye-catching. I like the story I was telling as much as the image: “Deep in the Orion Nebula, baby stars grow in translucent eggs until they are ready to hatch and float away…”<\/p>\n

\"274:365<\/a><\/p>\n

The beginning of my obsession with fingers and toes.<\/p>\n

\"132:365<\/a><\/p>\n

Multi-Mom, my cloning experiment. Turns out photoshop is a lot of fun!<\/p>\n

\"104b:365<\/a><\/p>\n

Not even an official 365 picture, but representative of all the images of the boys I’ve learned to take this year. This picture makes me smile every time I look at it, and isn’t that the whole point?<\/p>\n

\"Merry<\/a><\/p>\n

Because I developed a love of vintage cameras — and typewriters! — during my 365 project. Besides, you had to know a TtV shot would make the top 10.<\/p>\n

\"265:365<\/a><\/p>\n

A perfect example of the things I might never have noticed, let alone photographed, before my 365 project. <\/p>\n

\"106:365<\/a><\/p>\n

What on earth would make me take my camera into the stairwell at the office to take a picture of the people walking in the rain seven stories below? Only Project 365, I assure you.<\/p>\n

\"115:365<\/a><\/p>\n

And I never would have thought to pull off the road and creep around a park in the pre-dawn gloaming (at minus 2C, no less) poking around for worthwhile images if I weren’t looking for something worthy of the photo challenge I was in — and eventually won!<\/p>\n

\"268:365<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, so maybe I had some photographic knowledge and instincts before I started the 365 project. This one of Lucas and I reflected in the collandar was taken on Day 5 of the project, and remains one of my favourites.<\/p>\n

\"5:365<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a lot (really? a lot<\/em>!) of mediocre shots in the project, too, and a very few that I outright dislike. On the whole, though, I love how they capture the world as I saw it this past year, and how evocative each of them is of the time and place I took them.<\/p>\n

So, you might ask, what’s next? I agonized over<\/s> toyed with a few ideas over the last couple of months, including a TtV 365, a 52×7 (seven pictures a week but not one each day), and a couple of other variants on the theme. Much as I like the challenge of finding new ways to see the world each day, I have to admit it’s become a little tedious recently. You know how much I love my new job, but the industrial park where it’s located is far from the rich milieu of photographic opportunities I had when I was working smack dab in the middle of the Market, the Canal and Parliament Hill, which you’ve seen was a massive source of fodder and inspiration this year. I might yet set my sights on something like a thousand picture project, but one with no time constraints. We’ll see!<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, I’ve set out what I wanted to do. I’m sure I’ll continue to take way too many pictures, and if you want me to, I’ll continue to talk about them here. In fact, I kind of hope to keep taking at least one picture every day. But on those days when it’s somehow gotten to 8 pm and I still have lunches to make and the swiffer to be run and a load of laundry to fold and no photo? It will be one less thing to worry about.<\/p>\n

And so, here it is — the last picture. Almost from the start of the project, I thought about what this image might be. At various points in the last little while, I’d imagined it would be the old Underwood manual typewriter, with the words “365:365 THE END” typed on the piece of paper, or maybe a close-up of the boys with the numbers 3 6 5 written on each of their cheeks. This one came to me yesterday, though, and evolved from the idea of a high shot looking down at me looking through my pictures to this:<\/p>\n

\"Fini!\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Whatever you do, don’t tell Beloved I suspended the Nikon from the chandelier with a gorillapod and some duct tape during the baby’s nap, or this may well be the last picture you ever see me take!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holy crap, I did it! I’m not sure that I was convinced, back when I launched this project a year ago, that I really expected to actually finish it. And I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve learned. A year ago, I was using my Nikon dSLR mostly in the program modes. … Continue reading “Project 365: Fini!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-365"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3560"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3575,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions\/3575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}