Almost Made It Photos #3

This is likely my last batch of "almost made it" photos - though I may post one or two that I uncover in the coming months.

I've started thinking about a new photo project, but haven't made any decisions.  I think it is going to take a while to find the "right" thing.  It definitely won't be a "picture a day for a year" project, though!

Here's the latest (and last) batch:

A Day At The Beach

Delicate

Solo Flower

Boston Reflections

"I'm King of the World!"

Karen

Yellow Cap

Almost Made It Photos #2

Here's another batch of photos that I really liked, but didn't make it for their respective "day".  Not surprising is that 4 of the 7 are Martha's Vineyard-related!

Tree-Line Sunset

What Being At Work Is Like

Golden Dawn

Dawn of the Derby

Coming and Going

Summer on South Beach

Ocean Park, Oak Bluffs

Almost Made It Photos #1

Through the course of my 366 days project often I had a tough time choosing between several photos for a single "photo of the day" slot.  It helped me "edit", certainly, and when I made my choice, I didn't second guess.  What I did do, though, was save off my tough choices for the future.  Well, now that the project is over I went through my 2nd place photos - about 40 of them in total.

Here's 7 of them.  I may post more periodically.  

Fishing Plug Bokeh

John Belushi Gravestone

Mad Martha's Ice Cream Cones

Floating Flower

John Copley Statue

Orange and Black

Purple Haze

Thoughts, Tips, Lesson's Learned

Here are my random thoughts, gathered along my 356 (actually 366) photos project.

Collage of all 366 photos

Equipment at the end of this project:

Cameras:

• Nikon D7000 (NEW)
• Nikon CoolPix S70 
• iPhone 4

 Lenses:

• Nikkor 18-200mm VR 3.5-5.6G
• Nikkor 50mm 1.8D
• Nikkor 35mm 1.8D  [NEW]
• Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 [NEW]
• Nikkor 24-70mm 2.8 [NEW]
• Nikkor 105mm [NEW]

   Misc:

• Tripod [NEW]
• Lightbox [NEW]
• 2 Light stands [NEW]
• Camera bag [NEW]

Taking pictures while driving in a car, "just to get a photo", results in poor quality photos.

Take your camera everywhere.  Use an iPhone camera as a backup.

Taking photos every day becomes habit-forming, just like running or working out every day.  Once the activity becomes a habit, actually doing the task every day becomes almost routine/easy.

After about 200 days, I started really, really caring about each photo of the day.  The set of 7 photos (the week - I published weekly), became my "children" and I found myself looking at and appreciating them as the week progressed.

It is ok to re-take shots you took in the past.   Monet painted the same water lily pads umpteen times.   Plus, each day you take the same photo will undoubtedly have different light.

I've taken situational photos one day, and they didn't make the cut.  I've then revisited the situation several times, ultimately garnering a "photo of the day".

I didn't do a lot of reading/training, but rather explored the camera and situations ahead of reading photography books.  My mind seems to work that way - thinking of situations first, then reading some time later.

I still don't like using a flash.

High-ISO in the newer Nikons is AWESOME.  I love the D7000 and took many pictures at ISO 6500.  Many made the daily cut.

I avoided dog/puppy/kitten shots.

Dawn and Dusk - most inspirational times to take photos. If I took photos then, I usually knew that I had a "photo of the day".

I love Adobe Lightroom.  I only shoot in RAW now - Lightroom makes most things easy (except sending email copies of photos to friends/family).

I enjoyed the journey.

The End: Day 365 and 366

My final two photos of this "take a photo every day for a year" project.


366 days.


42+ photos per day average.


15,500 photos.

The End.

Day 366/April 16 -  Self Portrait

Day 365/April 15 -  Greenwich Villiage, NYC

Week 52 - NYC

Every year we've been taking a "birthday" long weekend in April as it is both Karen's and my birthday this month.  This project began in Washington, DC, and will end (except for the last day) in NYC, our 2012 long weekend destination.


After this week, 2 days left.  Stay tuned for "The End" blog post in a couple of days...

Here's this week's 7 photos:

Day 364/April 14 -  Battery Maritime Building

Day 363/April 13 -  Time Square at Night

Day 362/April 12 -  Symmetric Chaos

Day 361/April 11 -  Warriors of Past Seasons

Day 360/April 10 -  Blossom

Day 359/April 9 -  Taking Time To Enjoy a Sunset

Day 358/April 8 -  Memere and Kayla

Week 51 - Water

5 of the 7 photos this week had water, either ocean or pond.  I'm frequently drawn to these areas and these types of photos.  I may count them up and see how many over the past year I took.  Over 100?  We'll see in just over a week when this project is over.  Yup, 9 days remaining, can you believe it?

Day 354 is my favorite photo this week.

Here's the 7 photos for this week, the 2nd to last week of this project:

Day 357/April 7 -  Early Spring

Day 356/April 6 -  Morning Reflections

Day 355/April 5 -  Mason Pearson Brush

Day 354/April 4 -  Calm Pond Dawn

Day 353/April 3 -  Toothpick Reflections

Day 352/April 2 -  The Sun

Day 351/April 1 -  Turn to Clear Vision #4