Week 1: 2017 52-Week Photo Project
My approach this year to a photography project is to set a theme or constraint for each week and then make images to match that. For my first week, I selected “Many Views of a Book” as my theme to guide my image making. My idea at this early stage of a new approach to a year-long project is to take any number of images during the week around the selected theme. That is, I won’t limit myself to just seven images, one for each day. Rather, I will shoot as many images as I think important to get a pool of images that fulfill that week’s theme, topic, or constraint. From that pool of shots, I will select whatever number of images I think meet the criteria of the week’s subject best. That may end up being two images or twenty, or more.
Since part of doing my annual photography projects is to share my images, in fairness to those who choose to view the images, i don’t want to bombard them with tons of photographs. Therefore, I will create a blog post for each week’s effort that includes a gallery of my selected images. I will share one or two of these images on Facebook and Flickr. Not yet sure how I will use Instagram in the mix. I’m still working on that.
I am also still working on the themes, topics, and constraints I want to use over the fifty-two weeks, but a few of those I’ve chosen are “self-portraits,” “story telling,” "train travel,” “blurry but recognizable,” “macro shots - what is it?,” “clock faces,” and the list goes on.
My First Week
After working on some shots for my first week’s theme, “Many Views of a Book,” I am thinking this approach is a good idea. It allows for lots of latitude, lots of experimentation. I am sure it will only get better as i get into the swing of things.
We have several collections of old edition books in our house. Every year I tend to make at least one shot of them. So, I pulled two books from the Charles Dickens collection and began positioning them on our dining room table, first with the overhead chandelier on, then with it off. Then, I introduced a flash into the mix to try and get the background to go completely black. That was my first day’s experimentation.
I wrote the above a few days into my first week. Now that that first week is over, I have a better idea of how this is working for me. I still think it is a good idea, but what I have found is that I allowed activity to lapse. I shot a bunch of images on the first day, but didn’t shoot anymore all week. Now, that may have something to do with the subject I chose and the fact that I was also trying to record a batch of episodes for my YouTube channel. Not sure. But, whereas posting an image a day as in the past (2010, 2015 & 2016) kept me thinking about my images, this did not. So, I need to work on that. See how things evolve as I try other subjects and approaches.
However, one thing I have decided to do with these weekly shoots is to transfer the captured images from my camera - when I shoot with one of my mirrorless cameras as opposed to my iPhone - to my iPad mini 3 and then import them into Lightroom Mobile. Since I select the largest resolution possible when I do the initial import, I’m getting a JPG that is in the 4608 X 3072 pixel range and weighing in at anywhere from 3 to 7 MB each. In other words, large JPGs with good resolution. In this way, my images will be backed up to the Adobe Cloud and, in turn, down to my desktop version of Lightroom where they are stored on an external drive. This is something I’ve never done before and, as a result, I only have small JPGs from my previous years’ 365 day projects.
Fortunately, for this first experiment with a weekly project, I was happy with most of the images I made of different views of an old book. I will revisit this theme again and try some other approaches with it, but for now I like what I got. I hope you do as well.
