For most of my photographic "life" I've been a single image at a time person, not doing anything long term like shooting for an upcoming exhibition or book and I've been fine with that. I've always thought about having a project though, something that can be done on a long term basis, but haven't really found anything that's been thrilling enough to do.

Now though I find myself toying with 3 (!) at the same time. How's that for irony? I am not doing stuff for them every day, but they're ongoing in my mind at the same time, which I find both thrilling and a bit confusing too, mostly because they're rather different, but also because like I said I've always been a single-image person.

One project is my Instagram 365 thing which is just a few days short of being halfway done. It feels weird to know that I've already done close to 200 images on it. Hopefully I can come up with a lot of interesting images during the back half of this year's run!

Another project is my Graffiti Square idea where I take closeups of graffiti, making them into colorful (or not so colorful in some cases) abstracts. I find that it forces me to look beyond what is there on the walls, to find shapes and color combinations that for whatever reason attracts my eyes and brain enough to raise the camera to capture it. A fun side effect is that I sometimes come up with stories that are influenced by these images. I guess they function a bit like a Rorschach inkblot test...but in a much less clinical way! :-)

My third ongoing project, which some have already seen a few works from is my Old World project where I make newly taken (with a digital camera) photos look as if they're done with ancient techniques, like grainy black and white or even wet-plate photos in some cases. This was triggered by fiddling around with the Nik Collection as it became free of charge and it's been a lot of fun going through and finding stuff that I can add to this project, both from new works as well as selects from my older stuff! At some point I will hopefully get to show them all (however many I end up with) as a collection, be it in a coffee table book, exhibition or at least a gallery on this website.

And to make things even more fun...in a few days time the July edition of Camp NaNoWriMo starts up. This time around I'm not writing anything new; instead I'm having a go at editing and re-writing an old manuscript that I've had lying around for some time. I hope there's some life left in it still so that I've got something interesting to work with during the month of July!