goals
It’s been a few days since people all around me in the neighborhood seemed determined to blast 2020 into smithereens and it’s time to consider the new year and things to do this year
Read MoreThe Long Bridge at Bjärred, Sweden on a January afternoon. One of my first images of 2017
At the start of a year you're supposed to write a "this is what I will try to achieve" post (at least that's what seems to be the consensus among many bloggers), and I did one of those last year, where I stated that in 2016 I would do two things photographically that year; an Instagram 365 project (which I finished) and I would do more analog photography (which I've at least I've begun to do). So that's great for 2016...but that makes me think of goals for 2017.
Read MoreFirst image of my 365 project this year. "Night Cycle"
After quite an hiatus again from this blog it is now the first day of 2016. I type these words after a 2015 that had a few ups and quite a lot of downs and it feels nice to say that it is a new, "clean" slate as far as photography goes. Sure, I can tell myself that I'll improve all the things I'm not good at as far as photography goes this year - I'll master this or that, but I am not going to do that. That smells too much of New Year resolutions. Instead I'm going to try to keep things much, much more realistic.
There are two things I want to get better at/try this year as far as photography and that is analog photography/darkroom work and my restarted Instagram 365 project. That may seem like very weak goals, but these are thing I hope to stick with throughout the upcoming year.
The analog/darkroom stuff will be an interesting experience, but one that I've been wanting to learn more about for many years, ever since learning about it via Ted Forbes' The Art of Photography podcast. I've been telling myself that I "should get into that" but without doing anything about it. Now though, with my photo club getting a brand new darkroom with lots of space, it should be much easier to learn and get into. We'll see how that ends up functioning in the end, but at least I will try it! The fun stuff will be picking what camera to have a go with. I do have an old 35 mm Chinon camera that my dad bought in 1979, but I also want to have a go at using a Holga and 120 film, because of the size of the negative. So many choices! :-)
The 365 project is one that is "easier", since it's something I've tried before. My plan is simple: to shoot, edit and post one photo a day for the whole year via my LG G4. The camera in that thing is so good that I think it'll do justice to such a project in a way that my previous phone (an HTC One M7) didn't. I had a go at this two years ago, but ran out of steam after 7 months. This year I hope to go the distance, since in hindsight it was pretty foolish to stop after reaching well beyond the halfway point! I won't be doing a blog post for every day's post, but rather summaries, either every week or every month. If you want to follow along on a daily basis, go to my Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/tomasnilssonfoto/ or the Flickr album where they will be displayed as well (https://flic.kr/s/aHskrRACGm).
