Project 365 Photo Tips?

[samsmom]

Do any of your 365 Veterans have any tips for those of us who are giving it a try this year? Either about taking the pix or about scrapping them? I plan on doing Ali's Calendar design and then a separate journaling page, so I think I will keep it pretty simple.

But I am wondering about the photography part? Like, did you bring your camera everywhere? Did you try to get a nice mix of people/places/things? Did you take pix of anything that made up a part of your life? Looking back, are there things you wished you had done differently? Did you take all the pix or did you sometimes have others take them? Things like that. TIA!

[DesignerDigitals]

This weeks 365 Project Ideas and Photography Challenge at DesignerDigitals is on just that topic.

[dorah]

Just a note to answer some of your questions: I personally take my camera absolutely everywhere. I am lost when I don't have it because that is the only time I see something and wish I had my camera.

[Joey_M]

I have a dSLR and I wish I had a point and shoot to stick in my purse. I used my camera phone several times! My biggest suggestion is to not stress if you don't get a photo each day. There were times when I was WEEKS behind! I did a lot of journaling so I would try and jot down the little things I wanted to remember every day. If I didn't have a photo for a particular day, I would roam the house and snap a pic of something that I wanted to remember: my washer, vacuum, messes, shoes, etc. When you get behind, don't give up! HTH!

[Amy L]

Like Joey, I used my dSLR, my point and shoot and my iPhone in a pinch. I took lots of food photos! The best thing about this project is that it forced me to take stock in my daily life and record things that I would have otherwise forgotten.

[samsmom]

thanks! I will check out that other link too!

[katrinak]

The link is to a freebie samsmom AND anything I could add here, I've said there I hope you join us! It is a fun, crazy, life changing adventure!

[dugarner]

I second Joey. I would often miss pictures, but would catch up by filling in with things I wanted to remember.

I wound up taking a lot of repetitive pictures; many of my kids, lots of my house, things around the house, places we'd go. But it was a good representation of my life, to be honest. I'm a creature of habit, mostly.

I took my camera with me frequently, but with small children it was often not practical.

I wish I had put my foot down and won the battle with my daughter to get more good pictures of her. She's at an awkward age and I was discouraged that I had a billion pictures of my son and maybe 10 good ones of her from the whole year.

There are things I would've like to have documented (like a full laundry basket, or a desk covered in clutter), but my husband would have had a fit. He's a neatnik and is very dedicated to maintaining an air of neatness around the house and in our lives in general. So many shots I would have taken, I didn't, because I know if I put them in a book, he would've had something to say.

With as inexpensive as digital photography is, I say just take pictures of everything. Some of my favorite pictures were of two lizards gettin' together on my front windowsill (hubby asked why in the world did you take that picture???), dogs belonging to my friends when we were over there to swim one day, my son chasing a duck. Everything can turn into a great shot! My photography got a lot better, my eye is a little more keen, I can dial in settings faster. But I wish I had at least 10 photos to pick from every day. Sometimes I had only one, sometimes none.

Just shoot, shoot, shoot! Good luck! I toyed around with the idea yesterday to do this again, but I just don't think I can. I even gave up my December Daily album. I just realized, hey, I'm the one who decides what projects I do---and I just didn't feel like finishing it! And I'm happy about it! So, just do you own thing. You'll love that you did it, no matter what you have in the end.

[SarahDanyelle]

I carried my camera everywhere with me, but most of the time if I wasn't with people I knew that well I was scared to pull it out. So that's my 2010 goal, be less afraid of actually using the camera that I am lugging around. I have lots of pictures that seem repetitve as well, but that's life. I can only go so many places and do so many things in any given year. Good luck to you!

[katrinak]

The great thing about the repeat things in our lives is trying to capture them in different ways! Sarah, I think you were a master of that!

[carollee]

No rules, get that in your head and you'll have it made. I didn't take all the photos for my P365, because I was in some of them. That's important. Don't document your life and forget that you are a part of it. Hand the camera over and get you in there too.

[Kathie]

Everyone has pretty much covered what I had to say! There are a couple things that I would recommend--keep your pages simple. I really like the ones that chose the same design throughout the year. I used different templates and changed elements by the month to keep them different but cohesive and in retrospect even that was too much. The simpler the page the easier it will be in the end. Take lots of "extra filler shots" to use on the days that you just don't manage to get in a single shot. There is a list somewhere and I jotted down things from that and took those that I would have loved to have seen from my grandmother's life: shoes by the door, my frig, my grocery list, the grocery store, where we work, the yard, the house, etc. Take those when you have a chance and keep them in folder to pull from--there will be days you will be grateful.

Journal. That is the hardest part of going back and catching up is not having something to journal. Although the digital photo file has a date and pretty much helps you recall what you might want to jot down for that day, it really helped me to use my journal and facebook entries when I had two (or three) weeks to catch up on.

HAVE FUN!!

[mugsbigsis]

No rules!!!! I have my big camera, my point and shoot or my phone camera wherever I go so I take pictures any time something says "that would be a good pic."

Just a note when starting off your pages. If you know where you are going to print your book, get the template from that site and make sure that everything you want to print is inside the guidelines. Since we use full bleed for our digital pages they need to have a little more background showing around the edges than normal. I spent yesterday resizing my pages. I think they would have printed ok, but I didn't want to take any chances with a book that large.

[ValerieP]

Those are all such great ideas! I did think about the full bleed when I set up my template and when I went through the gallery, I loved what everyone did-but I was actually sucked into the pages that really showcased the photos and were more simplistic. Remembering to journal is a big one, which doesnt really make sense, since I make my students write everyday, it should be natural for me! Now-to go back to work on the December Daily!

[LauraBean]

I didn't carry my dSLR everywhere by any stretch, but I always have my iPhone and really like some of the shots I got with that.

I set up personal rules for myself: I'm like that. I personally clicked the shutter on every one of my Project 365 photos or, on one occasion I think, set up the camera and had my dd click--but I had set everything up (it was a photo of me and the self-timer wasn't working well for me in that instance). I took a photo every single day, no exceptions. There were days it was late in the day and I hadn't taken a photo, but it only takes a second to snap one, and I always did.

I did try for a mix of subjects, but that's probably because I'm easily bored. I know of photographers who photograph everything they eat for a year, for instance, but I don't think that would work very well for me! When picking which photo to use as my picture of the day, I often looked at my recent picks and tried to pick something (or someone) different. But I didn't always look and occasionally had two of one person in a row or something like that--oh, well!

Layouts: I went with two page spreads, one page per week, so my book--it's on order!--is 53 pages long. I mixed up the templates I used, but they match across spreads. I like variety: that worked for me. If I were to do it over, I might go for a slightly more homogeneous look--maybe more compatible templates flipped around different weeks? Maybe a common background. But maybe not; again, I like variety.

I didn't journal the first few weeks and sort of wish I had. I almost redid them, but decided against it. I do prefer the weeks I journaled, though.

I wish I'd kept track of what word art I'd used throughout the year; I often wondered: Did I already use that quote or title? But I was too lazy to go through all the previous pages to make sure I hadn't. I would keep a list next time.

I have some reflections on the project on my blog here.