Project 365 Learnings | a 7 Image Story

Project 365 Learnings | a 7 Image Story  Completing a Project 365 is not for the faint of heart.  What’s a Project 365?  It’s the marathon of photography; post an image every day for a year.  Although I have completed five Project 365 projects, I considered quitting early in each project.  You can find reviews of each project at on my web site under the Projects menu.

Post an image a day!  Sounds easy doesn’t it!  Post an image each day, from either your database or from images captured that day, for a year.  My goal, when starting my first Project 365, was to capture several images each day and post one of them the same day.  Accomplishing such a goal is much easier said than done.  My goal transformed very quickly to posting an image each day taken from images captured that day, the previous week, the same month, the same year, or past years.  The images reflect the events in my life without necessarily being images of the events themselves.  Some images are good: others, not so much.  Most reflect the year’s past; a few are truly remarkable images.  They all give me hope … in search of … the next beautiful image.

What have I learned?  After five daily image projects from 2013 through 2017, I’ve learned a few things to help make a Project 365 successful.  Consider these seven guidelines:

1. Make the project work around your lifestyle with a minimum of change.  Grind it out every day; post each day no matter what.  Build your photo process around work, play, family, etc. and get into a daily rhythm.  In my case, I realized very quickly that I could not capture and post an image on the same day for the entire project.  So, I changed my goal to just post an image every day.  It worked for me.  Leave time in your schedule to process and post each night.  Although it’s possible to schedule posting ahead of time, if you can’t find a time each day to post, success becomes much more difficult.
2. Folks ask me: What’s in your bag?  What equipment did you use?  What are the best cameras and lenses for this project? Although these are questions frequently asked, I firmly believe the quality of the captured image is directly related to the vision and skill of the photographer and only indirectly related to the equipment used to capture the image.  Carry a suitable camera with you during much of your day.  What was suitable for me may not be suitable for you.  When considering new camera equipment, consider equipment that fits your lifestyle as well as meets your standard for handling, functionality, and quality.  Or, you may want to change your lifestyle to fit the equipment you already have.  It’s a bit harder; sometimes, much harder.
3. Streamline your image database and post-processing infrastructure to reduce the time required to process and post an image each day.  If you do not have an image database, you might consider one like Lightroom or Aperture.  They are relatively inexpensive and dramatically help keep track of your images as well as provide some nice post-processing tools.  Then, develop your daily post-processing steps.  Once I make the decision on which image to post, my process takes less than a half hour to process and post using Aperture with the NIK plugins and WordPress.  (Note: Aperture is not supported any more.)
4. Find new faces and places to capture images in your daily life as well as special events and travel. When you see a possible photo, don’t hesitate; capture the image.  There’s no time like the present.  Capture images way out of your comfort zone.  Keep yourself open to capturing images you usually pass up.  I started going to more events like polo matches and finding new routes for my walkabouts.  Learn to post varying degrees of quality in your images.  It’s natural; you want to show your best images.  Sometimes, you may just need to post an image, any decent image.
5. Spend the time to improve your knowledge of your camera’s inner workings and settings.  Sounds boring even though it pays big dividends.  Many times you must be able to get the camera, turn it on, confirm the setting, compose, focus, and click; all in a few seconds.
6. Look for the nice light.  One of the easiest ways to begin capturing new types of images is to shoot the light.  You can make the light the subject.  Or, let the light enhance your subject; no matter what the subject.  Some would say the light is always the subject.
7. Finally, start now and have fun!  Many folks start these 365 projects at the beginning of the year, but they can be started anytime.  Have fun.  If it’s not fun, you’ll find it difficult to continue.  Change the rules, if you must; make it fun for you!

Hopefully, you have gained some insight into posting an image a day.  For more detail, please see my posts on my five Projects 365 projects under the Projects menu.

Each image will be posted individually this week with a bit more narrative under category Project 365 Learnings.

Click any image below for a slide show!