Valerie Ardini | Fine Arts & Photography

iPhone 365 project: halfway

November 6, 2009 in photo, projects, text
Tags: deventer, iPhone, iPhoneography, monochrome, object, retro, street photography

Taking an iPhone photo every day for 365 days was a project I spontaneously started six months ago. I had no clue about the 'consequences'. Now, halfway through the year (you can see photo 182 and 183 in this post): I haven't missed a single day. Yes, it was frustrating on some days; late at night when I still had to take that picture because 'I had to', or not knowing what to shoot, yet again, or not getting anything even remotely satisfying. On other days I would have so many nice photos I didn't even know how to choose just the one. There was one day when I completely forgot; I had taken one- very bad- picture though, so when I remembered just after midnight, that very bad photo had to go online. And yes, sometimes it takes up a lot of my time- which is not always fun for the people around me.

I am, however, very grateful for this project. I am training my eyes to see photo opportunities everywhere around me on a daily basis. I am creating something each and every day; very stimulating. I am experimenting much more again, taking pictures of everything and anything I see, like I did when I started photographing. I go go out 'to quickly take some pictures', even when the weather isn't great (something you don't always do- go out with bad weather- when you're self-employed and working at home, or when you're a bad-weather-hater like me.

Besides all this, I kind of 'pushed the reset button' with this project. I am no longer that dependant on my gear; taking 'that photo' is not impossible because I don't have 'that one lens'- which is something that plagues quite a lot of photographers. If I have the new dslr.. that one lens.. yeah but without that accessory.. if, thèn..
Well.. then what?
Then you're still the same photographer, with the same view, timing, techniques. My camera takes the picture, but I make the image. (And yes.. of course there are certain things that aren't possible without certain equipment.. and of course some/ better equipment opens up more possibilities. Still, you are the one making that specific image, not the camera.)
I tried printing some iPhone photos on 15x20 cm (=almost 6"x8") this week and I was quite pleased with the results. The megapixel madness is exactly that; megapixel madness. It's not all there is and it won't always give you better quality. Still, even knowing all that, I was pleasantly surprised.

Also, one of my iPhone photos was used for an article about iPhoneography in the UK Metro last week and this blog and the Metro piece were used for a blog on a Dutch iPhone news site- and there's more nice iPhoneography stuff to come- but I will not write about that before it's more concrete.

Special thanks to Nic ;)

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