The new year started without a bang for me. I arrived home from work with 35 seconds left on the countdown, then caught the 10 minute long Burj Khalifa fireworks display on TV. But hey, I still had free drinks, no crowds, no traffic, no parking hassle, and I didn’t have to wait hours before getting home.
Moving on to a less sad subject, now the 366 project officially kicked off, and here’s my first photo which I called Office Furniture:
While fooling around on the center strip (taking multiple shots to later choose the best one), a crowd of 3 workers gathered behind me. By the puzzled look on their eyes I could read their thoughts: what the hell is he taking a picture of? I could have gone into the merits of the composition, colours, subjects, lines, title, etc.
But I chose not to.
Eight days in and I need to take stock of my 366 “workflow”. I’m spending (investing?) way too much time to take this daily picture. It has to be something that I take in stride, not take a couple of hours from start to finish – location, shoot, drive home, post-process, upload. I guess it’s a learning curve.
You don’t usually realise how fast the sun moves while setting. Unless you decide it’s picture worthy but you’re stuck in the middle lane of Emirates Road. This happened to me today, and by the time I overtook some lorries, crossed three lanes (safely) and found an unobstructed view, the moment had gone.
Here is today’s picture for the 366 warm up, which I called True Self Portrait.
One photo a day (2012 is a leap year apparently). It seems many budding and professional photographers embark on such projects, for creative or self-improvement purposes. And now I’m starting mine, for both. The rules are simple: shoot and upload a pic a day. The idea is not to have masterpieces, but to get you thinking about the elements of good photography on a regular basis. Clocking up the hours this way never hurts. You can shoot with any type of camera: DSLR, point and click, or even camera phone.
I had never done something like this, so I went ahead and started 19 days early. You know, to warm up. These are some of my post worthy shots:
The full album with daily updates will be maintained on Google plus.
It will not be easy. There will be some days when you Just Don’t Want To Pick Up A Camera. Wish me luck.
