August 26th, 2011: 11:39 pm
At the end of July, Brad was wanting for more ‘enjoyable acts of photography’ in his life. He decided to make the most of his camera during the month, photograph anything, and end up with a satisfying collection of photos representing August 2011. (For the record, this is my favourite).
While I am no match for Brad’s photographic quantity or quality, it did get me thinking – I haven’t been taking advantage of this hobby as a way of breaking routine and letting my mind wander. Nor have I had any drive to work on a side project since about January of this year. So I decided it was time to get back on the ‘side project’ bandwagon.
I’ve seen people successfully complete photo-365 (a photo a day) and photo-52 (a photo a week) projects, and I admire their discipline in following through (as well as the ability to remember to keep taking photos). The reward at the end of these types of projects is a formidable visual time-capsule of the given window in time. As a side project, I went for a lighter approach. I decided that I would try to use my camera every couple of days.
If I saw something of interest, or came up with an interesting concept to try, I’d spend 5-15 minutes taking photos, and another 5-15 minutes in Lightroom, pick two, and post. It can seem a little hasty, but it turns the hobby into a more bite-size execution rather than waiting for larger blocks of free time to intersect with good weather and/or a visually interesting event. Even better, I either learned something or came to remember things I had learned on past photo outings. Most days, my inner critic would not like the end result of the session’s choice photos, but those were the days I usually came out of it with a set of ideas for how I’d come closer to the intended vision. So that counts as time well spent in my books.
The cool thing was that this project got me to take my camera out with me more often. Even to work. And it made me pull over on the side of the road, get out, and take photos, instead of driving past things thinking ‘someday I’ll go back and take a photo of that’. I also learned that ‘someday’ may never happen. At least until the snow flies, I plan to keep my camera in tow more often, and it will enable me to go capture those compositions that strike at random.
I don’t tend to stick with rigid time frames (like year-long resolutions), and did not intend to use August 31 as a distinct end for this project. Something else has caught my interest, and I have already gained momentum on it, so its time to wrap up this project as I know it. I still plan to publish more photos to my site, it just won’t be with the same frequency. Having ‘a’ side project is better than not having any.
More on that next side project later. Maybe.