For whatever reason, I’ve decided to do my second Project 365 this year. As of today, that makes 375 pictures posted to photoblog. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things:
- For me, personal is better. The thing I’ve enjoyed the most is looking back at the older photos and remembering the circumstances of each photo.
- If not personal, then a theme of some kind might be cool. I travel often and have been thinking about how to focus on just that.
- Even with personal, perhaps less than artistic shots, your photos don’t necessarily have to suck (like mine 🙂 ). Take some time to clean them up. With today’s multi-mega-giga-pixel cams, you can almost certainly crop to the best part of the photo and have plenty of size left, ESPECIALLY for the web. Learn to use whatever photo editing program you have, be it whatever came with your camera, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Photo-Paint, the Gimp (free), or even the excellent (also free) Fast Stone Viewer. Consider learning more about post-processing as part of your project. Taking the pic is only half the job.
- After you crop, at a minimum, learn to adjust things like contrast, dynamic range, color balance, and unsharp masking.
- If you have low light shots taken at night (hey, we work in the day time, right?), consider converting them to B&W. Your image editing program has some simple methods built-in, but there are some advanced techniques you might consider. The concepts on all these links can generally be used in every decent program, although menu names and terminology may differ. Special note for Corel Photo-Paint users prior to version X4, the color mixing controls are pretty lacking. Check out the section called Some Assembly Required near the bottom of dpFWIW‘s page.
- Do something with your finished work. At the very least, set up a screen show on your computer. Better, post them on the web at photoblog, Flickr, Facebook, or any photo sharing site. You might even consider setting up your own web gallery. There’s something about the discipline of posting my shots publicly that keeps me motivated.
- Finally, here’s a tip about that might help you remember to take your daily shot. It’s easy to get caught up in the day’s work and activity and just forget your project. Use your calendar or to-do list to remind you. Personally, I have a daily entry in my Google calendar set to email me at 4pm. If I haven’t had a chance to shot a photo by then, it’s a reminder as I’m winding up the work day. There’s still some daylight left and the project is on my mind on the way home and into the evening.
Good luck!
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