365 thoughts

I'm now 9 months into the project, so maybe its time for a few thoughts.

It has been hard work to keep motivated to find a new/different shot every day.  But on the whole, I think it has been a positive thing.  My camera has rarely been idle, and now travels (nearly) everywhere with me.

My eyes have really been opened, and I do find on occasions when driving wishing I could take a shot of the scene unfolding before me.  I now find myself paying much more attention to the little details.  Be it trying to see what the bird in the hedge is, through to looking at insects on flowers.  I have enjoyed seeing all the species of wildlife while out at lunch time.  So many birds, some I'd never (knowingly) seen, such as whitethroat, blackcaps, reed buntings.  I must also have seen about a dozen different species of dragon and damselfly, all within a mile of my office.

I've also tried to experiment with photos a bit more.  Be it with lighting or longer exposures, depth of field and aperture.  I've just invested in a flash sync cable, so will be able to trigger my dedicated flash off body without needing the built in flash.  I'm also hoping to work with filters a lot more.  I now have an ND8, which should help with landscape/water shots.  I've given panorama shots more of a go.  My camera does do sweep panoramas, but the downside is that it requires constant smooth movement that can yield blurriness.  Stitching together with Huggin does work nicely

I think I would also like to have more of a go at high and low key photos, but I don't always have ideas for the subject for a photo.  I also think I should try doing hdr more.  Good subjects is one requirement, as its easy to produce brackets of exposures but then find that nothing seems to sort of leap out.  What may help is if I learn more about the tone mappings. Which ones would be best for which contexts, how changing the parameters affects them, rather than fiddling and waiting to see the output!

I also think I would like a macro lens.  Something along the lines of, for instance the tamron 90mm f2.8. That certainly would get me looking at things I never would have thought of!