Alright, so I’ve started a new photo-a-day project for 2012. I know I failed at this last time, but I think it was because I was doing fairly detailed descriptions and lots of photo processing. I set my hopes too high for what I wanted each post to be and ended up being disappointed more than proud of what was being posted. So the enthusiasm kind of fizzled out.
A close friend of mine brought up the idea of doing a year-long photo-a-day project, and I liked the idea but knew that I’d need to do something different to be successful this time around. So for this new project, I’m simplifying the photo processing and upload process a bit by using my iPhone 4S and Instagram for every photo. I may do other editing in various apps before the photo hits Instagram’s processing, but everything will be done in my phone, meaning that taking and posting photos should take less time and be more portable.
And for descriptions? Well, this may be a little crazy, but six photos in, I’ve decided to write a haiku poem for each photo. I just went back today and wrote a haiku for each photo I’ve taken so far to see if it’s doable, and it was a lot of fun, so I’m hoping this new element will add more excitement to the project than dread. (You can see the haikus I wrote for the two photos above by rolling over them with your mouse, or by clicking and reading the Instagram comments.) I know writing haikus seems like it will really slow down the process, but since they’re such short little poems, I don’t think it’ll be too bad.
All of the photos will be posted and tagged on my Instagram feed, which you can find by username ryantoyota, or by searching for the #photohaikuaday tag as I seem to be the only one using it at the moment. If you’re not an Instagram user, or you’d like an easier way to view all the photos, I’ve set up a feed of the photos on Tumblr, although the photo quality isn’t quite what I’d like, so I recommend you click on the photos to see the images in full-quality on the Instagram pages. I’m also posting all of the photos to Google+, so you can follow my stream there or just view the whole gallery so far.
Well, here’s hoping this lasts longer than last time. I’m hopeful!
Since I haven’t updated my blog in forever, I thought I’d throw a recent video I produced for Hungry For Life on here. This was a long process, as footage for this video was captured in bits and pieces here and there all way back to July. Finally the deadline loomed close enough that this jumped to the top of my priority list at work and I was able to work at putting all of the pieces together. I’m disappointed with the audio in a few places. Lesson learned for the future: a shotgun mic is not as good as a lavalier for interviews. Looking back, I also wish I had spent more time setting up some of the interview shots. They could’ve been framed much better. Some of them were rushed and it shows. I’d also like to go through the final video and do a color grade, but due to my inexperience in that area and lack of time to spend learning it, there’s a good chance it may not happen before this has to be pressed to DVDs. Anyways, all that said, here’s the video:
Well, if you’ve been checking this blog every day for the last thirty days, you’ll notice that the posts stopped coming five days short of the end of the thirty photo challenge. I actually had a photo uploaded to Flickr for Day Twenty-Six as well, but I didn’t end up getting the time to write a blog post about it:
I took it while we were waiting for the ferry to head to Vancouver Island for early Christmas with Jenn’s family. Jenn had to sit in the back because we were transporting an elliptical trainer for Jenn’s parents and had to push the passenger-side seat forward to fit it in. After we got there however, the combination of slow internet and Christmas busyness pushed the photo challenge off my radar. Since we got back, we’ve had some busy nights and packed days I just haven’t found the time or inspiration to take the photos. So enough excuses, here we are on Day Thirty, and I’ve got nothing again. Sorry to let you down.
I want to thank Matt Hawkins for the challenge he issued that I managed to get to eighty-five percent completion. To be honest, that’s better than I expected to do, and while it would’ve been nice to make the last five days, I still don’t view this as a failure. I pushed myself to be creative on a more regular basis, and it was good. It’s got me thinking about other ideas to keep me updating my blog. Especially now that I might have a larger audience? We’ll have to see how things go in the busy month of December though.
Okay, so I missed Day Twenty-Four. To make up for it, you’re getting two photos today. I thought I’d take one as close to Day Twenty-Four as possible, so I snapped a shot of the fresh snow with my GoPro HD HERO as I left for work this morning:
Then, when I left work tonight at 8:45, I snapped another photo with my GoPro:
Both were later cropped down to a 16:9 widescreen aspect and had a slight sepia toning added to them for effect. And then posted here, technically twenty minutes late. Whoops.
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Twenty-Five’
Okay, so I always run out of time on Tuesdays since it’s bible study night. Tonight I thought I’d save time by using yet another camera in my arsenal and go with the iSight camera on my MacBook Pro. So I fired up Photo Booth and was prepared to take a quick ‘n’ lazy photo of me sitting in bed. Then I got kinda creative.
I thought I’d try the effects settings and I loved the way the glow looked with the low light. Really dramatic. The problem was, if I took “photos” with Photo Booth, it kept flashing the screen and I’d loose the dramatic light. So I came up with a nifty solution to disable the flash… take a screenshot of the Photo Booth preview. So that’s my photo for tonight. A screen capture of Photo Booth in action. I liked the way the light from my iPhone added to the photo, so I took a self portrait of a typical look for me before bed each night: playing on my iPhone.
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Twenty-Three’
Not much explanation tonight. Just liked the background of the Christmas tree lights behind this candle and took a few shots with my D100. Made some adjustments to one of them and uploaded it for the Day Twenty-Two photo:
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Twenty-Two’
Had dinner with a number of old friends tonight, and saw a breathtaking sunset outside, so I rushed out with a friend of mine and grabbed my D100 from the trunk of the car. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of a neighbourhood and couldn’t get an unrestricted shot of the sunset, without walking to the park, and it was insanely cold out, so we nixed the park option. So my strategy to get a bit of the foreground, but as minimal foreground as possible, was to take the shot on a forty-five degree angle and only include the foreground in the corner:
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Twenty-One’
Inspired by Erin’s black and white shots, I decided I wanted to make today’s photo black and white. So I grabbed the closest camera, which happened to be HFL’s Canon T2i (since I brought it home from the auction last night) and switched it over to the monochromatic color mode. Since I love grainy black and white photos, I cranked the ISO all the way up to 6400. Opening the aperture up to f/1.4 for that shallow depth of field left me with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second.
I snapped photos of various objects around the kitchen, and none of them appealed to me until I caught the espresso machine. I tried a few more angles and then brought the images into Aperture. Ironically, Aperture converted all of the images back to color because it was working with the RAW images, but that was a quick filter to get it back to black and white. Then I adjusted the highlights and shadows a bit, added some sharpening and definition to further enhance the graininess, and voila! My photo for day twenty:
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Twenty’
Quick photo an hour and a half late. Just got back from the annual fundraiser auction for Hungry For Life. Had a great night with auctioneer Gery Schubert playing Don Cherry. The auction was hockey-themed. Here’s one of the several snaps I got of the night with the Canon T2i from work and that nice, bright 50mm f/1.4 lens. My good friend Justin Keitch posing with Don, er… Gery:
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Nineteen’
So close. I almost forgot to post a photo tonight. Got all the way to changing into my P.J.s before I remembered. So I snapped this pic with my iPhone, of an ornament in our bedroom. Used the Hipstamatic app again, this time with the Lucifer IV lens and Ina’s 1969 film. And I’m quickly blogging it with my iPhone and the Wordpress app.
Continue reading ‘30Days: Day Eighteen’