One Hundred Photos a Day

I'm starting a new challenge that an artist friend/mentor has given me to get in practice for SoFoBoMo 2009 (Solo Photography Book Month) in May/June: take 100 photos a day for 30 days, cull them down to the best three each day, and then pick the 35 best ones of the 90 I end up with at the end of the month. I'm to attempt to shoot photos in a theme, and look for ways to connect the best photos of each day using that theme; a new theme might emerge as I look over my photos for the first few days, which is OK; but then I should direct my shooting for the subsequent days to fill out that theme.

This is a good challenge for me, as I never shoot this way. I'm finding it really hard to even shoot 100 photos a day. I can do that with no problem when I'm travelling somewhere outside my home turf, but it's harder with the familiar. The first day I took 20. The second day I did better and took 73. The third day I did none. And today (well...it's yesterday by now, it's nearly 2:30am), I have taken only 60 and am about ready to call it a night and go to bed.

Here are a few of the photos from the past three sessions:

This one I took when I thought I was working on a theme called "thresholds":


I was thinking this next one could be part of a series called Departure.


This one doesn't fit into any particular theme, but I like how it came out. It took the most set-up and post-processing of all the photos so far.


This one I've titled "Constellations" -- see the constellation reflected in the Christmas ball, as well as the constellation of lights on the tree? Kind of a Little Dipper / Big Dipper pairing. Not set up. It just turned out that way (after some cropping), and I didn't even notice the resemblance to the dippers until now.


So, you see, I'm not very good at finding a theme to tie all my photos together, or sticking to a theme I've pre-selected. This project is going to be very hard!

From the archives

I haven't gotten out to do much shooting in the snow apart from that one day. I've actually not even gotten outside much. I still haven't dug my car out in two weeks. Church was cancelled a second week in a row this morning, due to the snow and ice on the roads. So I've been spending lots of time inside, and one of my projects has been scanning old photos and slides.

Here's one from my archives. Taken in 2004, it's of the piano at Regent College. Taken on my old Yashica 230-AF, on Fujichrome Sensia slide film.