Category: 37 Days – Holiday Project

At least one photograph per day for the duration of the school summer holidays, that was my target, and I’m delighted to tell the world that I have achieved it! In recent years the school summer holiday is an ideal time to work. Office business doesn’t seem to be much quieter, but the trains have seats to spare and the weather is usually pleasant, an ideal time to carry the camera with me at all times and perhaps even take a detour on the way home – for art’s sake.

Several months ago I did consider taking part in a 365 day project, which basically means doing what I have just done for a whole year? But, with the added restriction of only being able to post one image per day? Imagine what an incredible amount of self discipline that requires, and I take my hat off to those who have achieved that goal!!

One advantage of such a professional project must surely be the lively discussions and comments between photographers worldwide. Judging by my online feedback, I can only assume that my project rarely saw visitors outside my circle of friends and relatives. It is this lack of interest that has saved me hours of writing comments to others… but at the same time deprived me of very useful criticism.

I feel I have profited enormously from the whole idea. The project has inspired me to consider subjects that I would normally perhaps not have considered and indeed it has whetted my appetite to discover exactly what my camera’s capabilities really are.

When I first started my photo blog I was quite proud of the fact that my pictures were not retouched, enhanced or whatever. After a while I realised that a bit of help from photo software was perhaps not such a bad thing, and now I’m sure that the old art of developing is far from obsolete. Whether an image is developed in a darkroom or on a PC is surely only a question of in which century the image was taken. But for the sake of this project I decided to work straight out of the camera. Not for puristic reasons, but simply because I didn’t want to sit for ages in front of a computer, every day, for thirty seven days.

Wanting images straight out of the camera, I began experimenting with exposures on a larger scale than usual to obtain the results I was looking for. In general I’m quite satisfied with the outcome, and although I won’t be de-installing The Gimp just yet, I may well do more work straight from the camera in future.

Black and White photography has taken a back seat role during the project, so I’m thoroughly looking forward to posting a few B&W images on the blog again soon.

As far as future projects are concerned… I’ve already got one lined up for the Autumn, but first I’ll enjoy a break and carry on with my normal, occasional blog work.

Thanks to all those who have looked, read, written, encouraged and criticised!

37 Days – Holiday project.

It was purely chance that these last two days of the “37 Days – Holiday project”  saw us away from it all, in foreign parts, on holiday… if a weekend away can really be called a holiday? But it certainly had a holiday feeling.

Strolling through the Golden Rectangle ( or whatever they call the area littered with all those famously named shops) I couldn’t help but notice the brightly polished door bell pushes.

In this shopping arcade (Vittorio Emanuele II) it seems that all the big names are present. Prada has had a shop here since about 1913, Gucci is also present as is Louis Vuitton on the left of the picture…. and McDonalds on the right.

With temperatures approaching 40 degrees several people keep their shutters firmly closed.

Last but not least, a view of the hotel reception area. A true holiday feeling as I sit in the cool having collected our luggage, before going out into the heat of mid afternoon for the short walk to the railway station.

I will no doubt be writing some sort of summary about the “37 Days – Holiday project”, but it’s just turned midnight, so I’ll leave that for another day.

37 Days – Holiday project.

The last couple of days of my “37 Days – Holiday project” and indeed the last couple of days of the school holidays around these parts. This weekend wife and I decided to take the train to Milan. On Saturday we sauntered through the narrow streets filled with all those luxurious shops bearing fashionable names and then arrived at the Duomo.

I read somewhere that the church is the third largest in entire Christendom. It has 3500 statues and boasts 135 spires. It would be futile to capture all this glory on my camera, so I therefore decided to post just a fraction of it, and perhaps inspire the reader to visit the real thing one day.

37 Days – Holiday project.

With the “37 Days – Holiday Project” drawing rapidly to a close, I thought it would be nice to shoot a couple of my favourite subjects.. next to wet streets of course. I find clean architectural lines against a cloudless sky quite fascinating, however although trolleybuses are a delight to ride in, they do tend to clutter up skyward views with their wires.

37 Days – Holiday project.

This morning I awoke to the sound of torrential rain. Clutching my brolly, I made my way to the station inhaling deeply the refreshing post thunderstorm air. By the time I reached my destination the rain had almost stopped and I was surround by some excellent photo subjects…. nothing like shiny streets and car headlight reflections to get me clicking away.

Not wanting to be too late for work I didn’t spend a lot of time fiddling with my camera settings, which unfortunately means that the first of todays photos is a bit on the bright side. The second image was shot through the back window of the bus, and may be considered a shade too dark. I think both pictures would have been better shot in black & white and a bit of ‘enhancement’ wouldn’t have done any harm… never mind, we’re bound to have another rain shower in the weeks to come.

37 Days – Holiday project.

Studying today’s image for short a while, the words ‘mediocre’ ‘average’ ‘boring’ immediately sprang to mind. It wasn’t completely dark when I took the pictures, but if I’d have gone to fetch my tripod it probably would have been. Hand held shots at this time of night are certainly a bit tricky, so I was expecting the worst…. and seemed to have achieved it rather well.

Struggling to keep the camera reasonably steady I adjusted the sensitivity from 200 to 400 ISO, but that didn’t really bring me much, and pushing it much higher would, I’m sure, have resulted in totally unacceptable noise – perhaps time for a new camera? No, for an occasional filling station by night shot I think not. But I’m sure these won’t be the only night shots this year.

37 Days – Holiday project.

Sitting in the restaurant garden, or more accurately, the courtyard, I was beginning to look around for suitable images for todays posting. For starters there was the main course 🙂 the liver was delicious, the wine excellent and the plate was pure white. I suspect the blue hue has something to do with failing light – some may assume bad exposure.

But it was the wall, the flowerpots and the cosy lights that really caught my imagination. Two pictures reached the final, one with and one without the waitresses arm. After much thought, I decided that the action packed arm somehow livened things up a bit, changing a common or garden wall with lights into a busy, bustling restaurant scene.

37 Days – Holiday project.

Todays photo shows the 17:27hrs TGV from Zurich to Paris speeding its way towards France. You may remember I posted a very similar image about a week ago. I like the effect. I haven’t quite captured what my ‘dream shot’ yet, but I hope to do a bit more experimenting and with a bit of luck hope to achieve a satisfying result before the year draws to a close.

37 Days – Holiday project.

Sunday: a day of rest, a day to enjoy the garden, a day to avoid boring everyone with photos of landscapes and everyday scenes. So there I was siting in the sunshine tucking in to a large piece of Alsatian ‘Flammkuchen’. Different pastry, different herbs and spices, different ingredients but otherwise similar to Pizza. I even managed to find a bottle of French wine in the cellar…. didn’t really go particularly well with the Flammkuchen, but after a couple of glasses – who cares.

37 Days – Holiday project.

Having done the shopping etc, it was time to spend a bit of time in the garden. The ‘lawn’ has been taking over areas of the garden where it has no business to be, and the hedge has been reaching new heights. So having tackled the grass, dandelions and all manner of botanical green stuff, I then chopped away at the hedge.