RSS FeedProject 365, do I dare?
I have been toying with the idea of following along with the hundreds thousands of people who take part in photo-a-day projects online. If you search groups on flickr.com you’ll find over 3600 groups with “365″ in the description. This is not new territory, but it is certainly an undertaking not to be taken lightly. If I start this project, I want to complete it.
Like I said, there are thousands of these groups available. Some want you to take a shot of yourself doing something different every day. New place, new pose, new angle, etc… Some want you to take a photo of a new object. I guess the first thing I need to do is decide what I want to get out of it. I do know one thing, if I take a photo a day for the next year, by the time I’m done I should definitely improve as a photographer. Honestly, that is my greatest inspiration for starting this project.
I’ve decided I definitely want to take on the project. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. I’m sure there will be days where I either just don’t feel like shooting, or perhaps I’ve taken a few dozen photos and none capture what I’m trying to convey. Regardless, I believe the project will be worth it in the end. The only thing to do now is pick the project and group I want to take part in.
My first thought was to do a self portrait every day. But, I’m just not that narcissistic. If I were to do something like that, I would want to do something silly like Running From Camera. Since that’s already been done, I’ll have to do something different. I could take a shot every day at the same time like Todd over at 606diaries.com. But, I’m just not the social butterfly that Todd is. I believe even I would get tired of checking out 365 shots of my computer screen. So, what to do?
So, my theme? 365 shots. Yep, that vague. So be it. I’m going to focus (no pun intended) on taking one quality photograph every day for the next year. I already take part in several photo-a-week projects that all center around a specific topic. My daily shots may come from those photo shoots. They may be of a doorknob. I don’t know what each day will bring. But, I’m excited to get started. All the shots will be posted here on the 365 shots page.
Wish me luck.
The Painful Side of Social Webbing
There are so many social network sites these days that it’s almost impossible to keep active on all of them. I have, or have had accounts on just about all of them. But, the list of sites I stay active with is very very short.
Today I logged in to Facebook to find that I had a new friend request. By photo alone, I had no idea who the person was. I followed the link to their profile and it was clear that they only requested to by my friend for the sole purpose of padding their friend count and to eventually send me ads at some point down the line. I spend more time on social network sites doing this than I do actually staying in touch with long distance friends & family members. It’s for this exact reason that I deleted my account on MySpace just last week.
With Facebook, the thing that has the biggest ability to waste your time is the massive amounts of third party applications that are available. Rate movies, rate your friends, movie quotes and surveys, before you know it you’ve spent two hours telling people how much you loved the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. A while back I made a choice to remove any of the apps that are time-sucks and I will ignore all requests from friends to add new ones. If you’re a contact of mine on Facebook and I ignore your request, please don’t be upset. I’m just trying to save my sanity.
I’ve found that I no longer have much interest in keeping up with any of my social network accounts. I’ll keep my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but it’s VERY unlikely that I’ll join any new ones. I’m much happier using my blog here, my photo blog at slackerphotos.com, my twitter account to let everybody know what I’m up to. I then use netvibes.com to read close to 70 RSS feeds. I also use Twirl to follow a few dozen other people’s tweets (a post on twitter is referred to as a ‘tweet’).
If you haven’t already checked out twitter, I strongly suggest it. I realized something about twitter the other day that has really increased it’s usefulness for me. As you may know, I’ve taken up photography as a hobby recently. While checking out some photos on flickr.com, I found a link to a photographer’s blog. When I checked it out, I saw that he also was active on twitter. I started following his tweets. Then, I checked out the list of people he followed. I went through his list and found 5 or 6 other photographers to start following. Also, when checking out their twitter profiles I found links to their photo blogs. Some of them are absolutely amazing. So I add those to my RSS feed list on Netvibes. Now when these people post a tweet or a blog post with a juicy tip, I’m being spoon-fed information on how to improve as a photographer. I have to say that’s better than any class I could possibly think to enroll in. Not to mention being 100% totally free.
Be careful that your social webbing isn’t eating up all your time and not providing you with any benefits. Don’t forget that your time is valuable.
Photography as a hobby
I may have spoke about it before, but when I get in to something, my addictive personality tends to take over and I REALLY get in to it. One hobby that I have been interested in for a LONG time, but haven’t really dove in to. Until recently, that is.
We are planning a trip to Alaska and since I figure it’s basically a once in a lifetime trip, I want to make sure I capture it properly. With that in mind I went out and bought a Canon Digital Rebel. Once it arrived, I realized I don’t know the first thing about photography. This lead to the first purchases for my new hobby; 2 photography books. Reading the books lead to the next three purchases; Polarizer filter, remote control for the shutter and a GPS location recorder. It surprises me to say this, but so far, that’s where the purchases have stopped. And, until I learn a bit more and really figure out what type of photography I’m interested in, that’s where the purchases will stay.
I’m quite interested in becoming a decent photography. Selling my photography or having it published has nothing to do with it. But, I’ve had decent cameras in the past and I’ve taken a dozen or so photographs that I consider great. That’s a dozen great ones out of a couple thousand not so great ones. I would just like to increase the number of great shots I have in my collection.
The only way I’m going to get better is to keep shooting. But, I think it’s important to also expand on the types of shots I’m taking. To help out with the diversity, I set up a photo-a-week group on Flickr. Each week a new topic is chosen and all the members of the group have to go out and take a photo on the specific topic. I’ve also been taking part in a weekly photo assignment from digital-photography-school.com just for the extra practice. If you enjoy taking photos and want to take part in our weekly group shots, definitely sign up for our group.
Another way that I’m progressing my photography skills is by checking out other great photographers. There is no shortage of them on the internet. I’ve found several new photo blogs to check out on CoolPhotoBlogs.com. Very inspiring. You can check out my photo blog, which is still in it’s infancy, at SlackerPhotos.com. You can also check out my more of my photographs on my flicker.com account.
If things go well, by this time next year I’ll have a collection of photos worth showing off. We’ll see how that goes.
Busy week in review
This past week was pretty busy. I started the week by flying to San Francisco for a trade show. The thing about trade shows, they are basically all the same. Maybe not the content, but everything else about them is identical. I’ll show you what I mean. Here was my trade show:
Day 1: Fly in the night before the show, eat dinner too late, go out for drinks and get to sleep way to late.
Day 2: Get up early, have a crappy breakfast, spend most of your day on your feet, go out to dinner too late, go to an industry party with an open bar, get to sleep way to late.
Day 3: Get up a little later, have a crappy breakfast, have very few meetings at the show because everybody else went out too late last night, too, eat dinner way to late, skip the industry party, go to sleep way to late.
Day 4: Get up and rush to the airport to fly home.
The show was good. I had some great meetings and made some decent deals. But still I arrived home totally bushed. On Thursday I planned on going to sleep around 10 PM so I could get a good night’s sleep. Instead I fell asleep at 8:15 and slept all night.
While I was in San Francisco, I did take a few photos that I’m pretty happy with. One of them was a 30 second exposure I took from my hotel room of the street below. I love catching the streaking lights of the cars on the road. I’m thrilled with how it came out. You can check them out over here.
Friday night we went back to Sam’s Town to play the 11 PM tourney. We started with 4 tables and it didn’t take that long to get down to the final table. We lost a couple players and when we got down to the final 5, I was the overwhelming chip leader. I then got unlucky in a couple hands and I was quickly the short stack. A few minutes later, I was out of the tournament in 5th place. That, as they say, is poker.
On Saturday I slept in. It was lovely. I woke up and watched some hockey. We then went to lunch and headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Have I mentioned lately that I’m addicted to this place? My current list of favorite games are “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Star Trek”, and “Austin Powers”. I have had a few good games on Creature, but I feel like I’m about ready to break through and have a HUGE game. I currently have my name on the high score boards for 2 games (Star Trek & Funhouse) and I feel Creature is next on my list. Soon.
Saturday evening we ordered the UFC fight on pay-per-view and had a few friends over to watch. I have to say that watching UFC is way more fun with a group of people. I watch a fair bit of it on my own, but it’s just not the same.
Sunday is going to be low key. I need to rest up and get another good night’s sleep. I have a LOT of work to do this week. I would like to get out and take some more photos, but we’ll have to see how that shapes up.