Sunday 18 January 2015

Day 18: Another year, another 365 photos

I did wonder if taking on such challenge as a 365 photography project again would break me; but I have to admit that I really enjoyed the evolution of my photography in 2013. And as I've said before, taking a photo a day is not such an onerous undertaking, but writing reams about each image can be. And I appreciate that's entirely my own fault. I will take a photograph and it will provoke some query in my mind as to "when did that first happen or when was it built?", "why is that like that?", "how does this work?", "I wonder if...". And then I can spend hours researching the answers to these questions, which then generally also leads to other intriguing snippets of information and I just have to keep reading. Then, when I've finally sated my fact gathering, I spend more time distilling this new found knowledge (or confirmation of something that I already thought I knew) by sitting down to craft a blog post. And then I wonder where the time has disappeared to. All in all, not unenjoyable but definitely a time thief.

The wonderful PR shot a photo-a-day and posted them on Instagram last year, and really only tagged them. I loved seeing her photos and it inspired me to consider another 365 days, but doubted whether I could emulate her. I'm not sure if I could curtail my ramblings to mere tags, history shows that I probably would struggle to stifle my verbosity.

So to ease myself in, I took the daily pictures but held off blogging them, and making a big declaration that I was tackling another full year of being a slave to my camera. That makes it sound like a chore taking the time to notice the little changes of the season, recording the minutiae of my daily environment, stopping to admire a scene and generally just opening my eyes and being more aware of everything. Who could really knock that as a way of living?

I can easily predict some of the initial images that would find their way to my SD card. Since moving to our new building in November, the view through our picture windows or from the balcony of the city around us is very alluring. I see the buildings opposite my desk starting to turn pink and I have to find a reason to grab my camera and head to the other side of the building and record another sunset. And I do love a sunset. Also our nearest neighbour is the Shard in all its pointy glory, a bit of a picture magnet itself.

I've always been fond of the architecture of Westminster station; concrete has never looked so curvy, dramatic and photogenic. The criss-crossing escalators, the pipes, the girders, the cables, oh and the passengers, it's all rather appealing. And now my commute takes me there very regularly, I predict the cathedral-like station will encourage me to make that location a frequent theme on my blog.

The first weeks of the year are generally not rich pickings for flora and fauna. I did find a cute little red leaf this morning, but there isn't a huge amount of greenery that isn't evergreen. My eyes will be peeled for green shoot alert now. Cross fingers for some snow, I don't think I caught a whiff of a flake in 2014. A good hoar frost would be rather desirable too. I still have a robin in the snow on my winter photo wish list, but both are looking a tad elusive now.

So here I am, eighteen days into the shiny new year, consigning myself to another 365 project and all that entails...eek!

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