New photo challenges

For those of you that didn't see my post on Facebook, I just completed my 30th year of teaching, 29 at the same school.  It's getting to the point that I've been around so long that I've been teaching longer at my school than three of the other teachers have been alive.  It's just something that I've noticed that I have many more years behind me in this profession than I do in front of me.

I'm in the first week of summer vacation and I've accomplished a whole heck of a lot of nothing so far.  Well, not really, it just seems like it.  Friday, the first day was pretty much spent sleeping.  The recharge on my batteries was something that I really needed.  For the most part, with a couple of errands, mowing the lawn and other "honeydoos" that I've accomplished, I'd say this summer is a smashing success right now.

I haven't picked up my camera much so far, but I know that will change.  Near the end of last month, I ended my 365 Project.  For the first two years, I made sure I went out every day and took at least a couple of shots with my camera.  I used the best one of the bunch to post at 365 and sometimes posted others in my reserve album.  The third year, I used the reserve album as my main album, but  I decided that I wasn't going to be so uptight about it this year.  I wanted to post great photos every day, not just average stuff I'd taken on a particular day, so I resorted to filler shots when I either didn't pick up my camera, or didn't like what I'd taken so far.

Eventually, there came a point where I decided that the process behind 365 was done in my mind and I ended the project.  This doesn't mean that I've stopped taking photos.  On the contrary, I'm just posting them in a different format on Flicker now.

I'm involved in several different projects over at Flicker.  One project is a 52 week challenge.  Take and post a photo each week based upon a theme.  The tomato shot above is this week's entry into the "Smartphonography" challenge for this week.  Not having a smartphone, I got explore my iPad a little bit and use some of the camera settings on it.

I'll continue to work on my 100 Strangers Project.  With 37 stranger shots taken in 10 months I've been averaging 3.7 strangers per month.  When I first started, I figured I'd have that project done in less than a year.  Well, it just goes to show you that taken shots of strangers is a much more difficult task to undertake than I realized at the time.

I'm also involved in a monthly blogger photo challenge.  Last month's challenge was a night time challenge.  The month before was all about transportation.  This month, the theme is Bridges, so expect to see some bridges near the end of the month.  And, as always, there will be my weekly entry for the Sharpshooters International Photography Club.  As you can see, I'm still quite busy, photographically.

I've been going through some of my archived shots and dealing with them.  I've already looked at several PhotoShop tutorials on things that I want to try.  If you click on the Flicker link above or here, you'll be taken to my photostream.  Feel free to add me as a contact so you can follow along there.