Project 364plus1

This is a new and involved project I’m doing.  It’s based on the photo project 365, which is an unaffiliated internet project where you take a photo a day for a year.  The only rules are the ones you make on your own, other than taking at least one photo per day.  But, it’s not for the faint of heart because it’s more of a commitment than you’d think.  In our version of the project – ingeniously named Project 364plus1 by a friend to make it distinguishable – there isn’t a theme or particular subject….it’s just a picture of anything.  It doesn’t matter when you start, just stick to it for 365 days.

I knew that if I thought about it too long, I’d chicken out of it for fear of the commitment that it involves.  So, while getting drunk on New Years Eve, I opened it up to some photo-centric friends via a Facebook group, and took the plunge!  We’re taking and sharing our photos pretty exclusively through Instagram (via #364plus1), although I’m also posting mine to Flickr for personal archiving.  While each picture I’ve done has been through Instagram so far, I’m also hoping that this project helps build a better relationship with my DSLR.

Why do this at all?  Hopefully to get better at taking pictures, and to have an awesome set at the end of it.  Mostly, though, to have a visual record of things that I thought were cool, noteworthy, or visually interesting this year.

Now that January is close to an end, here are some things that I’ve learned so far:

• I like taking pictures of red things
• The Instagram filter Kelvin is worthless
• If you stick to your goal of a picture a day, you might get forced into stumbling upon something cool.  I made myself go walking around my neighborhood to get a shot, and found something totally unexpected.

i forgot to tell you

I got an honorable mention in the Marin County Fair for this photo!  It felt really cool.

Mission Street

Holga panorama from Mission Street. This one is probably generally more appealing than the pano from the Lower Haight. The color and differences in shapes are really exciting, but I think there might be less of a story with it.

holga makes things creepy

Here is a set of photos from one of my Holga’s.  All of these photos are from within 1 mile of my house, which is not a creepy house, and is not in a creepy neighborhood.

The camera added a staggeringly creepy, lonely, isolated, cold, and secretive feel to these pictures, and i LOVE it.  I think it adds a lot to these photos in turns of their artistic value.  But that said, if I didn’t already know these places intimately, there’s no way in hell I’d ever want to go there.

Holga fun

Holga cameras are funny.

They are so janky and give you such glorious accidents that they’re an art form all their own.  I really like them because since they are so low-tech, you have total control over everything, especially the number of exposures per frame and how far the film gets advanced between shots.  There are tons of other playful things to do too.  I learned about a bunch of this at a Holga 101 class taught by Angie Crabtree at Root Division.  There are the shots I took for that class (some of them are supposed to be panoramas, but they weren’t scanned that way).

 

I was super spoiled for my birthday, and I can’t wait to try out my new Holga that has a flash that lets you change the color of the flash!! Plus lens filters…oh my. 

fennel

When you rub the fronds of this plant on your hands, it smells like licorice.  These ones are easily 7 feet tall.

pop-up city

a preview…more to come!

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Thing-a-day

Earlier this year I went to an exhibit at Noisebridge put together by Revel Art (formerly the Art Night Collective).  The concept?  Fun-a-day, in which people chose one thing that they do everyday for the month of January.  Having documented this thing-a-day, all sorts of recorded projects showed up.  Haiku-a-day, coffee-a-day (photos), knitted-thing-hung-on-a-public-tree-a-day, etc.

I really like the scalability of this exhibit…or perhaps I should refer to it as portability.  This is totally an idea that you could take back to your group of friends and do your *own* thing a day challenge and exhibition.  Friends, I suggest you start thinking of something since this is basically inevitable now.

I’m going to take a photo a day for the month of April.  I have this fancy new camera that intimidates the crap out of me, and I want to spend this month getting comfortable and competent with it so that I can rock it in Europe.

I got started today, and some interesting questions have already been raised for me.  First of all, this is the first time I’ve actually been able to photograph things the way I want to!  This is probably the first time I’ve ever contended with too much zoom.  I was super sure I would use the telephoto lens I got for the uber-macro shots, but it was way to much for me today…so I switched between that and my less zoomy one.  But either way, I have pictures that I’ve been wishing I could take for years, but haven’t been able to because of the limitations of my camera.  Until now!  yay!

To that note, a bird that had become a regular at the electrical tower near my house made a re-appearance after like two years of absence.  I guess I wouldn’t know if it’s the SAME bird, but I have a feeling that it is.  It’s called a night heron, not sure of the sex because they look the same.   It’s a really cool looking bird: very angular with moody black and gray colors.  It’s form is complimented so well by the urban flavors of the electrical tower, and I had always wished I could do it justice in a photo.  Here’s my attempt:

But I’m not sure I’m sold on it.  An interesting thing happened when I got back to my computer with these photos; I struggled in my attempt to decide on this picture being about the bird, or about the shapes.  The one on top tells a more interesting story because it lets us see the bird as a little vulnerable/unsure of me, and there is more going on with the metal of the tower.  But here are a couple of pictures that take the shapes more into consideration than the individual creature.

Totally different feel because they’re serving a totally different purpose.  The question is, which purpose do you settle on when, say, making a print to have in your house?  I mean, the shape ones are really pretty neat, but seem less personal and therefore lose…something.  Hmmm, many thinkings to be had.

cookie

This is one of those fortunes that I’m taping to the wall.

the time right before dusk