365 Project: A Photo a Day by Kaleb

Since I mentioned my 365 project yesterday I decided to show yo a little bit of what I have so far. The idea for the project came to me last christmas break when I figured out what my theme word for the year was going to be. You may have heard me talk about my theme word and verse before, but if you haven't. For the past couple of years I pick a theme word and verse and then whatever goals I set for the year build on top of that concept. So my word for the year is “Practice” and my verse to accompany it is “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” Colossians 3:23 NIV  

One of the areas that I am wanting to practice in this year is photography. This is a skill that I have always wanted to develop, but have not taken the time to pursue it, except for the use of my iPhone. So to make sure that I actually go through with this I made a goal to take a photo a day, but with a few restraints:

1. I can’t use my iPhone to take the photo2. I have to shoot all photos on manual3. Create a deliverable at the end of the year (That way they don’t sit on a hard drive somewhere)

I created these restraints to make sure that I am learning how to properly expose a shot and to make myself slow down. One of my defaults is to fall into a point and shoot mentality and not slow down and  set up or anticipate the photo.

So here is a little progress of how it is going. These are some of my favorite photos thus far and a spread of what my deliverable is going to look like. I am still working through what the deliverable looks like, but it will most likely be package/book with postcards in it. I know it sounds like a lot. A couple takeaways that I have learned so far is to break everything up into chunks and set time aside to accomplish these chunks. It is way easier to sit down and edit 10-15 photos as apposed to 100-200. Next is to develop a system/process of how you are going to work and save files. For me, I found that it was easier to import all my photos into Lightroom and adjust basic exposure issues and then take them into Photoshop for any other major adjustments. Also, having a folder structure will save you a ton of time later when you are searching for specific photos. Mine looks like this _01_January>_Originals and _Edit>_01_Filename(the number represents day of the month, and I added a descriptor just in case there are more than one photo on that day.)