stratigrafia

START SOMETHING NEW

1/11/2015

What I’ve always admired about Apple is their emphasis on creativity. Inspired by their post Start Something New a couple of weeks ago, I’ve started exploring with my camera.

My goal is to notice what is around me every day, to see those moments of beauty that I too often overlook.

I’m going to use the camera on my iPhone 5S, partly because it is usually nearby, and partly because I want to keep things simple. I have a Nikon D3100 that is great for my field work and whenever I need control. For this project, though, I don’t want to be fiddling with my tools.

Composition is one of my main aims. All the photographs will be square, just to break out of the standard 4x3 snapshot format. I want to focus on what’s in the image, all of the image. I want to fill the frame, get in close, and make every pixel meaningful.

I will do a minimum of image processing, again because the goal is to capture what I see. Cropping is fine and maybe an exposure adjustment, but nothing more.

I’ve been posting one image a day to Facebook, and I’d like to keep that up. I don’t want to be a slave to that constraint, but it’s a good reminder to look around me daily.

I’m finding that I’m often attracted to abstract forms, such that it’s not always clear what it is that I’ve photographed. Friends often try to guess what the image is, and I’m torn over whether to say what it is. I’d like people to focus on the image and accept it without necessarily knowing what it is, or wanting to know. I don’t want it to turn into one of those “Name that Picture” games in the back of my son’s science magazines. But I also don’t want to keep it a secret: knowing what was photographed might help someone else to notice their world.

My plan is to stick to a particular theme for a month. There is a thread running through this month’s photos, and I want that to be true for every month.

Let’s start something new.

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