I’ve come to the end of doing a photo a day in the year 2011 and I feel like I largely succeed in following my rules and meeting my goals. I did either cheat or just plain old fail on a few days, but for a voluntary program like this, a 2% failure rate (which is roughly what happened) is okay in my book.
I think I’ve become a much much better photographer through the process. You clearly see a big change after April 9th when I took the class at the Chicago Photography Center. The other part of it was the constant practice and repetition of shooting and editing. I still have a long road to go in terms of skill and eye, but its been an amazing year of growth.
Some things I’ve learned:
- Doing something every day is HARD, no matter what it is except necessary bodily functions. Its more of a time commitment than one would think.
- It’s very difficult to keep coming up with fresh ideas if you feel the need to have every day be a little bit different. There were days when I didn’t shoot anything all day and wanted to go to bed and ended up shooting stuff in the house. By the end of the year, I ran out stuff in the house. Also, I ended up doing accidental themes for days at a time because I couldn’t think of anything new.
- There are days when things don’t work out or you just shot all crap…but if you are gonna stay on the daily mission, you post it.
- I have a hard time asking people I don’t know if I can take their picture, or just taking a picture of unknown people. Hence, you got a lot of landscapes and buildings and whatnot.
Here’s links to 23 of my favorites through the year in no particular order:
- The Biltmore Hotel
- The Washington Monument at dusk
- Ding Dong, MMMkay
- The Chicago Skyline
- Swing!
- Y?
- Fall Colors
- Violin
- Waiting
- Wrigley and Trump
- Sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge
- Reach
- The US Capitol
- Chicago Water Tower
- Pike Place Market
- North of the Border
- The bonus beer shot on Epcot from the boardwalk
- Beer
- Forest Gears
- What are you looking at?
- Spring on Michigan Ave
- The strawberries from Wine
- Train approaching
Here’s the top 5 most visited photos on the blog:
- Ice skating in flight – I’d like to reshoot this, I could do better now. Its very search engine friendly
- Any skirt in a storm – The Marilyn statue is still a big deal, and this shot got around to a bunch of blogs
- Food Porn: Matzo Softball – Search Engine friendly
- Will you be my date for life? – I pointed out it was Sarah’s and my 10 year anniversary
- Blue wall: Half-way done! – I think I talked this one up when I painted it. It’s just a nice blue
I really enjoy photography, so I’ll still continue to shoot. Hey, I gotta learn to use the backdrops more. That said, the frequency of photo posts will be going down. I might just hide for a month and take no pictures. I need a break.
