Well, it seems like everyone is doing a 365 project these days. 1 shot a day for a whole year. It’s a great idea, but not really for me. I know that trying to make myself do a shot and post it every day would burn me out, but if I throttle it back a little I think I can handle it. Plus it gives me more time to work on the things I want to focus on.
So, I’m going to be doing a 52 project instead. One shot a week for a year. Much more manageable for me. And it will let me focus more on the things I want to improve over the course of the year. They are (but not limited to):
- Planning
- Post
- Composition
Let me briefly go over each one and talk about them.
Planning
Most of my shoots are spontaneous, which isn’t a bad thing. I like just going out and seeing what I can find, with or without a subject. It usually works out pretty well and I get good shots from thinking through the moment. But on the other hand, I’d really like to work on conceptualizing a shot, planning it out, and then executing it. With a week per shot it will give me time to focus some time on planning, rather than rushing through a new shot each day.
Post
Post-production. It’s important and I need to work on mine. I’m pretty good at using Lightroom to give my photos the color and contrast I want, but aside from that I don’t do much. Since I will be focusing on one shot each week I can take the time to adjust more and hop over to Photoshop to enhance even more. I’m not talking about actions or quick-fixes. I want to do some great compositing like Dave Hill or Justin Paguia. I want to use Photoshop to finish telling the story I couldn’t capture with my camera.
Composition
I think my composition is pretty good most of the time. The one thing I really want to force myself to do is shoot more landscape shots, especially portraits. Most of my portraits are, well, portrait, which makes it difficult when setting up a portfolio for the web which is predominately viewed in a landscape mode. Aside from that, just making sure distracting elements are out of the frame, not cutting off people at joints, etc.
So that’s it. Three big things for me to work on over the course of the year. My goal is to post the new pic every Sunday evening (or around then, depending on my schedule) along with a blog post talking about it and my goals. The first one should be up this Sunday, July 19th, 2009, so watch for it here and over on my Flickr. I’ll create a new Flickr set to track my progress as well.
Wish me luck!