30-11:
That picture is a bit of a cliché to terminate the series, but I am a bit running out of ideas…
It is now time to reflect on the project, I suppose. The project actually started with that thread
here, where I presented a blog from Japan which I have been following lately. And I followed the blog, because I found the photographer interesting (I got 2 of her books). The photographs in her books have a freshness that appeals to me and I find some of it in the continuous stream of her blog, even if the blog is subtly different. The books always use the square format, the blog apparently uses a phone in portrait orientation. The books use film. The pictures in the books are more reflected and their order is carefully chosen.
After following the blog for a while, I wonder what made her pictures attractive. Imposing to myself a similar routine was the way to find out. So I made it public here that I would post a pic a day and try to make pictures by the same process. I did not copy her pictures (only two are on a subject she photographed herself: 5-11 and 16-11), but try to emulate her process of seeing and discovering things.
What did I find out? Well, obviously, I am not a Japanese woman with a degree in design, so there are differences. I am not really sure how to put these differences into words, but they are relatively clear to me: I don't compose my pictures in the same way, they tend to be more "geometric" (but part of that comes from the rectangle versus square format). I realise my weaknesses in using colour. I also have a weakness in that I am more abstract and less emotional.
All the pictures were taken with an iPhone and all are in portrait orientation. All the pictures were edited and uploaded on the iPhone. That was another constraint I set. Using the iPhone was both frustrating and interesting. I was surprised by its macro capabilities, for example. I hated that its focus is inconsistent (and I found surprising that nobody noted that some pictures are not correctly focussed). I wish iPhoto, which I used for editing, had a way to correct perspective. I hate that the iPhone has no way to adjust the exposure but I was surprised how much iPhoto can pull back shadows from underexposed jpegs.
I also was surprised that Cem and, to a lesser degree, Tom started a series on their own. Well, maybe Tom did not and in any case I expect him to deny everything. I feel a bit sorry for Cem, because he unknowingly chose a much more difficult project. His project is more difficult because it implies finding a new story each day. I did not do that, all I promised was a bit of colour and shapes in a frame each day and that is much easier to sustain. The flip side of that coin is of course that most of my pictures are not illustrative per se and Tom immediately pointed that out that it would be difficult to sustain interest. Which is true, but there is a trick. The original photographer sells books. One does not need to "sustain interest" once the customer has bought the book, just to produce a relatively coherent body of work.
In a nutshell: I am glad I did that project. I did not quite learn what I expected, maybe, but I certainly discovered a few things. Thank you for having followed it.
