Monday, January 16, 2012

Welcome

Four years ago, I started a blog with some geocaching friends entitled Electronic Breadcrumbs.  The purpose of that blog was to share our knowledge about geocaching and outdoor activities related to the use of a GPS.  Very quickly, it became clear that the group of people that we'd assembled wasn't going to be posting very many things on the site and I ended up being the main poster for the first couple of months and the only poster of anything afterwards.


The hardest part of that particular blog was trying to come up with new and interesting content on a regular basis.  In 2008, there were 116 posts over the course of the year.  Some of those were by others in the group, but the huge majority of them were my posts.  In 2009, I was down to 100 posts, still a respectable amount, almost two posts per week.  2010 saw 80 more posts and I realized sometime near the end of the year that Electronic Breadcrumbs was slowly running out of steam.  You can only talk about geocaching for so long before you run out of things to say and you start repeating yourself.  I tried to continue, but my last post, the 14th of 2011 happened on April 10th.


The other thing that caused the demise of Electronic Breadcrumbs was I was introduced to another website called 365 Project.  The purpose of this website is to encourage people to take photographs and post them on the site.  A true 365 project would be taking a photo every day for an entire year starting on January 1st.  I guess any day would work, but I thought I'd give it a try.  I was worried back then that I would lose inspiration quickly and end up taking many photos of my toes.  I learned quickly that there were a variety of subjects out that were just begging to be photographed.  I dove headfirst into photography last year and Electronic Breadcrumbs fell by the wayside.


On December 31st of this past year, I finished my first 365 project.  I completed it without using any fillers, taking at least one photo every single day for the entire year.  In fact, I am now at 383 consecutive days of taking a photo and always, that means more than one photo.


Last year, I took 7200+ photos during the project.  I was absolutely amazed by that stat, especially because I was usually so conservative with my photo taking when I was using film.  Digital is easy however and you don't have to worry about the expense of development.  If it doesn't come out, just trash it and move on.  I have just started my second year project which will cover 2012.  Hopefully, that will also cover an entire year, that is unless the world ends on December 21 as predicted by some.


The purpose of this blog is not just photography however.  I'm a very visual person.  If you look back over the old Electronic Breadcrumbs blog, you will find very few entries that aren't accompanied by photos.  A picture really is worth a thousand words.  I intend to write about daily happenings.  Many of the posts will be about techniques I used while taking my photo of the day.  I will probably include how I processed the photo with PhotoShop Elements or other programs that I have on my computer.   Just about any other subject that I'm interested in talking about is fair game as well.


I might not post every day.  In fact, I'm positive I won't post every day, but I would like to post at least twice a week, if not more.  Photos will accompany each new post.  Please, as always, feel free to comment if you have questions or if you just want to comment.  Feel free to disagree.  Let's keep it civil and get along is all I ask in return.

5 comments:

  1. I've popped over here from Electronic Breadcumbs - I used to enjoy that blog very much. Good luck with your ongoing photography project. I have also decided to tackle Project 365 this year (well, more like Project 366 I suppose), it will be interesting to look back on at the end of the year, hopefully. There is a link near the top of my blog if you would like to see my 17 photos so far (actually 18 as on one day I was torn between two). Sarah.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by Sarah. I've gone back occasionally and looked at my photos that I took last year in January and February. Most would probably not even make the cut today. I'm actually embarrassed by some of them, but that's what we do as photographers. We learn and hopefully grow as our eyes improve.

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  2. Yes, indeed; you have a definite knack for B&W. A marvelous photo, Paul. Now, I just wonder; if we look back at this photo in a year, or five, will be appalled at how expensive gasoline was, or amazed at little it cost?

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  3. Where can you find a black and white camera? Found one on eBay but I think they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes there. Regardless, enjoy the photographs. I may have to try this 365 day with an iPhone 4S. Maybe Siri can find me a camera! Good to see you're back on the Blogger!

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    1. I take all my shots in RAW, then import them to PhotoShop Elements 9 and process them there. My black and white shots are converted in PSE, then uploaded to the 365 website.

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