Project 365

Last year, when I took my second 31 Days of August challenge, I shared my idea to sign up for 365Project, despite some misgivings I had for such a big and long-term engagement. Still, what did I have to loose, so I jumped on the bandwagon. Of course, on January 1st. Project 365 community is very welcoming and attracts quite talented and inspiring (amateur) photographers from all over the world. I was warmly accepted, gradually started following other people's feeds and got followed in return. To me, however, all the likes and positive comments I got on my photos suggested that I had to make an extra effort each day to justify the encouragement and that meant that instead of just casually taking a mediocre picture and posting it each day I made efforts and spent quite a lot of time to plan and take a mediocre picture to post. I persevered for almost three months, though the last couple of weeks I began posting much more casually, mainly pictures of my knitting and yarn dyeing projects. I uploaded my last picture on April 1st and then decided that it was pointless to continue as it was no longer any fun and was rather a chore. Lately I checked my account and noticed that (probably due to no activity), though my account was not deleted, my uploads were gone. So, to mark this effort of the first trimester of 2018, a selection of photos I uploaded to my 365Project account, as well as a couple I posted on FB:

:Jan15

: Jan19

:Jan20

:Jan22

:Jan25

:Jan28

:

:Feb09

:Feb20

:Mar18

:Apr06

:Jul20

31 Days of August

Last year I took my first month's challenge to take one picture a day, aiming to improve my skills with the DSLR camera (Nikon D3200). The challenge was a failure to me, though I participated to the end. I had imagined that I would go around my business in town, carrying the heavy camera and in between chores would take a few perfect pictures. Of course, I was quickly disillusioned and ended taking pictures with my phone or the small travel camera. Although everyone nowadays is a photographer, I do not feel comfortable taking pictures with the DSLR in public on the street, just seems too pretentious of me.

So this year I limited the area of picture taking to our home and the nearby places, where I could easily carry the camera and even a tripod, with the exception of the three hikes on Vitosha and Rila. I took all the pictures with Nikon 3200, played with the settings and tried new techniques. I still haven't read the f*ing manual and I don't intend to (too boring), but I did read a lot of tips and trick and advices and watched video lessons.

Because of the limited area where I took the pictures, they are not very interesting and diverse, but they did teach me something about light, composition, viewpoint. Now I'm thinking about joining the 365project, the only thing that's stopping me is that this picture taking actually takes a lot of time - sometimes an hour for a picture and I'm not willing to invest that much time into taking pictures every day. And I would risk soon to succumb to mediocre casual pictures taken just for the sake of uploading any picture of the day.

Day 1
I started the challenge with a reference to a picture I took four years ago and submitted to a photo contest in a popular Bulgarian news site. The editors liked it and are still circulating it every summer. This is a printscreen of the head page of the site on August 1st:

Day 2
Sunflowers bouquet with light from the windows, accentuated on the flowers

Day 3
Home-made eclairs

Day 4
Composition with coffee

Day 5
Beautiful tree on Vitosha

Day 6
Almost full moon

Day 7
The beautiful colors of Caprese salad

Day 8
A puzzle assembled

Day 9
A rose in the twilight, using flashlight to distinguish it from the surroundings

Day 10
Lots of traffic in the sky

Day 11
Composition in yellow - homemade lemonade

Day 12
Hummingbird moth in action on Vitosha

Day 13
Rain drops, taken with high speed

Day 14
Grapes

Day 15
Composition with fruit

Day 16
Colors

Day17
Rustic composition

Day 18
Citrus chicken while cooking

Day 19
Lots of pictures taken on Malyovitza,
There I experimented with speed (for running water), light and boken

Day 20
Night subway (high ISO, open aperture, low speed)

Day 21
Cooking peach jam in the oven

Day 22
Lines in the sky

Day 23
Beer picture

Day 24
Charlotte cake for Gaby's BD

Day 25
Portrait picture

Day 26
Leisure time

Day 27
Composition with white wine

Day 28
Cinnamon buns

Day 29
Heart-shaped boken lights with hand-made paper filter

Day 30
Street photography - market

Day 31
Because it was the last day I posted three pictures I liked which I took that day
Sunset

A curious ornament

Graffiti

Sunset over South Bohemia, Czech Republic

Yesterday husband and I returned from an excursion to Prague and South Bohemia, and I'm still going through the thousand of pictures we took. However I like so much the bunch I took from the bus window of a sunset on our way back from the Hluboka Castle, that I'm hurrying to share them with you: