Weekly Wrap-up #2

For some reason, this week feels like it took forever to end! The first week flew by and this one crawled along for me. I have several ideas for the rest of January, though, so onwards we go!


"day 5--your sins are like scarlet"


"day 6--looking glass"


"day 7--fly, Snow White


"day 8--Hero's dream"


"day 9--Snow White's demise"


"day 10--ice prison"


"day 11--playing cards"

Behind the scenes: thwarted plans

One of the outtakes from my photoshoot yesterday, SOOC.

The final image of "day 7--fly, Snow White"
Yesterday, I wanted to go to a woodsy area to take a photo of myself running away from the camera. Unfortunately, due to the warm spell Anchorage has had this past week (with temperatures around and above freezing!), the snow in our driveway became soft. All winter it has been frozen and compacted and easy to drive on. Unfortunately, my car doesn't have a very high clearance and while I have snow tires, it wasn't enough when I sank into the soft snow! I spent well over a half hour digging the snow out from around my car and attempting to back out of the driveway to the road. Eventually, I gave up and had to get myself back up the driveway and into the garage. By this time, I was losing light and had to make due with taking a photo in my backyard and compositing it into a background I had taken back in November. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do, but thanks to Photoshop I was able to make an image that conformed with the vision I had in my head.

Ways to stay inspired: Flickr

My first 365 project was posted online for just my internet friends and my family. While they were all very encouraging and nice, it was ten times different posting my images to Flickr the second time around. I was able to connect with a completely new network of people!

Flickr is an online photography community where you can upload your images to share with the world or to keep private (there are settings to keep your images completely private or to share with just family and friends or to share with the whole internet). There are organizing features, such as tagging photos, putting images into sets and galleries, and other such things. As far as I know, it is one of the most popular photography communities online. It is free to make an account, but you will need to go through Yahoo, if I am not mistaken.

Putting my photos into different groups, especially the 365 Days group, helped me to stay motivated and find inspiration. There is a camaraderie that develops when you see new photos day after day from the same group of people that are going through the same struggles that you are. Posting a self-portrait every day is tiring, but when there is an entire community of strangers wanting you to succeed, you are that much more eager to press on.

A sort of sister-community to the 365 Days group is We're Here! Users sign up to pick themes for every day of the year (to "infiltrate" various Flickr groups), so if you are stuck with coming up with a new idea in your 365, you can easily find a prompt that others will be attempting, too! I love seeing how others have interpreted a theme and this is the perfect community for that.

Getting artistic feedback is another benefit of Flickr. While there are many novices, there are also many seasoned photographers that may leave helpful feedback for your photographic growth. There are several groups that you can submit your images to that are specifically for artists looking for critique, but if you are especially sensitive, I wouldn't recommend this. Remember to be polite, if you want someone to check out your stuff, ask nicely and don't expect anything. People have lives outside of Flickr and if they are an especially popular photographer they probably don't have time to respond to everyone that contacts them.

Posting on Flickr gives you the opportunity to have your work seen by an audience it wouldn't have had if you just posted it on your personal blog. Every day, Flickr selects the top 100 "interesting" photos of the day and these images get LOTS of attention through the "explore" feature. I've been explored a few times and have gotten a lot of positive feedback and exposure through it. It is a huge ego boost and big motivator to keep producing work that you are proud of. Not all amazing photos are explored, though. Flickr has a mysterious formula for calculating "interestingness", so don't be discouraged if you don't get explored.

Quick tips about Flickr:

• Read the rules of the group you want to submit your picture too.
  Often people, in their excitement to get comments on their images, submit their photos to every group they belong to. However, if your image doesn't fit with the guidelines of the group, you will just be annoying other group members.
  
• To get comments, you need to leave comments.
  Like most online communities, you need to be an active participant to get attention! If you want people to check out your work, browse other users' photostreams and give them feedback. This won't guarantee they will check out your work, but it raises the chances that they will be curious and click your icon.
  
• If you want a chance to be "explored"...
  I can't pretend to know how the "explore" system works, but this helpful info posted by a Flickr user has several tips. The ones I follow: don't upload more than five images a day, don't put any one image in more than five groups its first day of being uploaded, and TAG TAG TAG!
  

Weekly Wrap-up

How is everyone's first week going? We are four days in to the new year and I'm already having a blast. Having a guided vision for my project has definitely improved the quality of my photos and the fun I have making them.

My work this week:


day 1--beginning again


day 2--in the snow


day 3--the queen dreams



day 4--my kitten is knittin'

Day 1--beginning again

day 1--beginning again, a photo by XeniaJoy on Flickr.

Happy New Year!! I'm so excited to begin this project again. I'm looking forward to the journey and hoping that YOU will begin a 365 this year, too :)

-7 days: Questions to ask yourself before starting a 365

When I completed my first 365 I was full of relief that it was finally over, but I also wasn't happy with the end results of my year spent taking pictures. When I started, my "statement of purpose" for my project was "I want to show my kids some day what a year in my life was like." Turns out, that wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted to create photos that illustrated a narrative where I could dress-up and play a character. I was following my statement of purpose and becoming more and more burdened by the project as time past. There were ups when I would dress-up for the pictures and tell a story, but there were a lot of downs because I just wasn't doing what I really wanted. I was following my own rules, but I was bored and getting drained of creative energy. My favorite time of the project was Christmas-time (which was only two and a half months in to it!) because I dressed up and experimented with lights, with story telling, and camera angles. After Christmas, there wasn't anything I felt like I could dress up for, so I fell back into the hand shots and mirror pictures. 

For my second 365, I had a better idea of what I wanted to do. I came up with some themes ahead of time and felt a lot more confident going in. However, my statement of purpose was just to "keep myself busy/distracted while my husband is deployed." I didn't have a clear goal of what I wanted visually, just what I wanted the project to do for me. I knew I wanted to be more illustrative and artsy, but the themes I had planned were the opposite of that! I had a lot of "featuring this" sort of themes, which would have worked great for a documentary sort of project, but it wasn't what I wanted. I am much happier with the results of my second project, though, because I realized pretty quickly into it that I needed to change my game plan to get the results I wanted. It did also satisfy my purpose of keeping myself busy while my husband was deployed, but when he got home and we added another furry family member to our household, I couldn't prioritize my project like I had when John was gone and my confidence in my photos suffered because my creativity was basically shot.

This time I have a specific plan: I want my photos to be illustrative and portray a narrative. I have several themes for the year and intend to come up with more. When there isn't a specific theme, I hope that my photos reflect my personal photo style. In some ways I am still figuring out my personal style, but for now I have a few guideline questions to ask myself: Does this photo look like it has been tucked away for ages in an album found in an attic full of treasures? Does this picture look like an illustration from a fantastical story? If it doesn't, can I justify its existence in my portfolio?

Ask yourself what you want from your 365. Do you want to document a year in your life or do you want something different? There is nothing wrong with documentation, but make sure it is what you really want to do so you don't disappoint yourself later on. You don't need a lot of themes or mini-series within your 365 to have a fun and successful project, but the faster you figure out what you want from your 365 the more you will get out of it! I was too stubborn to give up on my first 365 even with being disappointed with myself for weeks on end, and even though I finished it, I felt like it was a failed experiment for a long time. A strong sense of purpose can make all the difference in the world.

P.S. Merry Christmas!

-14 days: Equipment

As you prepare for your 365, you may be wondering what sort of equipment you will need. Here are what I consider the basics and helpful extras to have:

A camera. You can get creative with any sort of camera, whether it be on a phone, a point and shoot, or a fancy DSLR. Your skill level, finances, and commitment to photography will probably determine what sort of camera you enter the project with. I'm not here to tell you what camera to use, just to say that your camera is only a piece of equipment, you are the brain and you have the creativity!

Self-timer. Now that I have said what kind of camera you have doesn't matter, I am going to recommend you have one with a self-timer :P A self-timer gives you the option of not having to hold your camera at arm's length for every photo.

Remote. If your camera has the option to be remotely trigger, I highly recommend it! You can get into weird poses and not have to run back and forth to the camera to trigger the timer if you can just point a little remote. Having a remote totally changed my style of photography!

Tripod. You can stack books or DVD cases to get your camera at different heights, but a tripod is not only more portable than a stack of books, it can get much more diverse angles and is more stable.

Editing software. For my kind of work, this is essential. For others, this might not even be necessary.  There are lots of free editing programs if you don't have the money to spare on software. If you aren't sure you will like a paid program, look into a free trial to see if it fits well with you. Also, there are cheaper versions of some programs that strip away the super fancy features of the full program that might be a more pocket-book friendly alternative (Adobe Photoshop, for instance offers the "Elements" version of Photoshop for much cheaper than regular Photoshop).

And now for the extras!

Fun lenses. Having a fun lens or lens extension can add some spice to your photos if you are getting stuck in a rut, just make sure not to over use it!

 

Kaleidoscope-esque extension.

 Fish-eye extension

A stand in. I didn't really have a stand in my first two 365s (sometimes I would take pictures with other people and they would stand in for me, but this was rare), but it would have been very helpful to have when I was setting up my shots all alone. This time around my husband helped me make a portable stand that I can take places and I don't have to waste time doing the "trial and error" method of composing my images.

Props and costumes. Props can give you purpose in a photo. An image of a person sitting at a table doing nothing versus an image of a person sitting at a table with a cup have two different messages. The cup may be a special hand crafted item or it may be the fluid inside the cup that is important (like if the cup has tea versus egg nog). A prop can make an image say more than just "hi, this is another portrait of me," it tells a story, like "this is a portrait of me drinking egg nog from the cup my grandma made me for Christmas when I was 7"

What other things do you think you will need for your 365?