Tips & Tricks: Help with a 365 Photo – a – day Project
Let’s do a Project 365. Wait, what is a project 365… So glad you asked! It is a challenge to pick your camera up at least once a day, every day for a year.
What kind of camera do I need? Do you have a dSLR? Super! Do you have an iPhone or Android Camera? Great! A Point and shoot camera? Fabulous! That’s all you need!
A year ago I set out on an adventure to do a 365 Photo a day project. Truthfully I didn’t think I’d make it. In previous years I’ve tried to do a 52 week Photo project and while I accomplished this, it was soooooo hard. Then another year I thought maybe, just maybe I could do a 365 project that focused on me. Well turns out I’m not that self centered, or at least that’s how it felt taking that many pictures of myself! Oy! And I’m guilty of taking a lot of selfies. Sometimes that’s the only way people know I exist because no one really ever takes my photo, but that’s another story/rant for another day.
So back to that 365 photo a day project… last September I decided to start it. Most people choose to start their photo journey on January 1st so that they have 1 year and it’s a calendar year, however I decided to start on September 1 because if I was going to do it, I was ready to commit and I needed to get it started.
That’s all it takes. The commitment.
Let’s start off with the Q&A session:
So what’s the purpose of a 365 Photo a day project?
- It is a way for you to enhance your photography. You have a starting place and an ending place. Hopefully your ending place is better than where you started. And this is an opinion of yours, not of other people. Keep that in mind!
So what do you take pictures of?
- Anything you want. You can start out and take a photo a day of the exact same thing, choosing something that you will have on you or have access to for 365 days. In fact on flickr there are groups that focus solely on taking a photo of the same thing, ie dog, sunglasses, sky, yourself, (the sky is the limit…).
- Or there are bloggers out there (I just happen to know 2) that give weekly or monthly photo prompts. You take the prompt, take a photo that matches (think outside the box!!) the prompt and post those photos. They are there to help you be successful in taking at least one photo per day for a year.
- Finally, shoot for yourself. Shoot your life. Go about and just shoot whatever makes you happy. There are days when you will feel extremely inspired and there will be days when you’re wondering what you got yourself in to. It happens….
What if you miss a day?
- Don’t worry about it. That’s it. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Sometimes life takes over. Sometimes you get sick. Sometimes you’re busy. No big deal. You have a couple options…
- Pick another photo you took the day before to make up for the day you missed or take 2 photos today, one for today and one for yesterday. Problem solved!
- Chalk it up to life got busy, recompose and move on. Continue on and woops.
- There, problem solved!
What if I don’t have a fancy camera?
- As I mentioned above, use a point and shoot. Use a film camera. Use your iPhone or Android phone. I’ve used all those (including an Android… every now and then my iPhone dies and I use my hubby’s phone. He went to the dark side this year. ha!) except a film camera although I’m not opposed to using a film camera, I just don’t have film for the film camera I own anymore.
Where do I post these photos I take?
- Anywhere you want. There are photo websites such as Flickr.com (I used to have an account there back in 2009, got it when I was taking my photography class but I don’t even know the log in info anymore), Photobucket, etc. Post on Facebook. Post on Instagram. Post on your computer. Print out and post on a calendar. Print out and post on a bulletin board. Okay you get my point… just post them somewhere.
- On a social media site you’ll get feedback from people. Sometimes you won’t like the feedback.
- example: My photo 24 was a photo of a cheeseburger I was eating. It was Wednesday which happened to be my long day at school. I needed a photo so that was what I took a photo of. It was an interesting point of view, lighting was good, I got fairly decent composition… so I snapped a picture. Then I got grief on Facebook for posting that and not pictures of my baby girl. Oh well whatever, that happened to be what I was able to do that day.
Do I need to put a watermark on my photos?
- That is totally up to you. I did put them on mine… more so on my blog ones because I actually found one of my blog posts on someone else’s blog a couple years ago… CREEPY! But I put them on my photos I placed on my personal Facebook page as well just because.
What will I really learn?
- You’ll learn self discipline. Do you need that, probably not, but it does teach you to remember and be diligent.
- You’ll learn about composition
- You’ll learn about light
- If you have a dSLR you’ll learn settings
- You’ll learn that you sometimes look funny taking some of these pictures, but that’s okay!!
- You’ll learn that some days you’ll be desperate to get a picture in….
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| 2-21-15 | 4-3-15 | 5-3-15 | 6-23-15 |
- But you will learn that people are behind you. They want you to succeed!
Equipment Needed:
My recommendations for equipment:
- A Camera. Like I said, it doesn’t matter if it is a phone camera, a film camera, a point and shoot or a dSLR. Just make sure you have a camera!
- Nice but not necessary it is helpful to have a tripod if you want to be in the picture. Although there have been times I’ve said I need a selfie stick too. I’d sooooo get made fun of if I had one though!
- Nice but not necessary a photo editing program. Hey you don’t have to go out and drop lots of money on Photoshop or Photoshop Elements although they are very nice to have. You can use freebies out on the internet such as gimp.com, picmonkey.com, or ribbet.com as some examples. I’m sure there are more out there…. oh like picasa.com… see.
Other helpful items:
I found an app on my phone, I know they have it for IOS, I’m not sure about Android’s…. hubby went to look for the app but never told me if they have it. It’s an app called Collect. It allows you to place your photos on a calendar and you can set it up to send yourself reminders. I get my reminders at 6pm so that I still have a few hours before bed just in case I forget. There is a free version as well as a paid version. Do you need it, no but it is helpful/handy.
So just because, I know I said that we shouldn’t totally base our photos off of likes but this is my overall liked photo from 365 days.
300/365 – I kind of put my foot down and said we were doing family photos since we haven’t done them in a few years. Oh and I only have 65 more days on this 365 project 🙂
In Facebook likes, Photo 300 is also the highest liked photo.
Instagram though chose a different photo as the “top” photo.
361/365 – She was guarding her truck, it wasn’t going to leave without her. Dad’s truck was hooked up to the hay trailer which was backed into the barn and not moving, but it wasn’t going to move without her knowledge.
These Photos were the overall least liked photos. I’ll only do the overall though because there were more than these Facebook alone… 38 photos in Facebook received no likes compared to the 6 on Instagram that received no likes. And they were different than any of these 17 (the 6 Instagram photos that is…)
So this is just something to do to have fun with and help teach you while you’re at it. It can teach someone, everyone something about photography… maybe even just teach you to like/love it (mom… lol).
Now I’ll show you my photos by month… if you want to see them more in depth though, click on the numbers above each month photo and it will take you to the post with a bit larger photo to see :).
Thank you for following along in my journey.
Now to end this, I’ll share my 365 photos through calendar view. Hope you enjoy!
And one last question… Start with September 1 again or start with January 1? I can’t decide…. But I have photos from September 1 so it would be easy to start there……
