Image shot with Minolta MC W.Rokkor-HG 35mm f2.8 and processed with Vintage Film Lightroom presets
Chapter 7 of the #leesixtyfive project is here, and that’s a wonderful thing.
Not much has changed since the last update though, so I’m not sure what to really talk about in this post. But there’s no reason we can’t make that a positive thing too.
Most of the articles I write on here get planned or at least outlined beforehand.
While that helps with efficiency once you begin getting the words out, I do find the process as a whole slows me down when the planning and research stage is boring enough that I procrastinate.
Which it often is and I often do.
So let’s take this chance to just write and see what we get. Stream of consciousness. Typed diarrhoea.
Yikes.
Contents
Two wildly different perspectives
This update brings us to photograph 210 in the #leesixtyfive project.
The images still in the queue to be edited and uploaded to Instagram takes us up to around 235, depending on whether they all make the cut or not. I’m still undecided on some.
As I write this, we’re on day 309 of the project. That means after 85% of the time elapsed, I’ve shot around 64% of the photographs I need.
These numbers don’t make me feel great. They make me question whether I’ll be able to complete this.
And rain is forecast for the next 3 days.
Despite all the photographs and updates I’m publishing, I’ve not really spoken to many actual people about this thing. But in the last couple of weeks, I did.
Both of them said the same thing. That over 200 street photographs in this timespan is a lot. I see their point and I agree. Objectively, it’s a good number of photographs.
But when the target was to be over 300 by now, it’s still not enough for me.
That subheading is a Father John Misty song, by the way.
I was listening to the record just before writing this and it seemed apt to use it, seeing as I’ve somehow arrived at the point where people are having different perspectives on whether 200 street photographs is a lot or not enough.
The easy ways to catch up to 85%
Of course, making enough photographs to catch up on this wouldn’t be too difficult if we were going on numbers only. I could go out as soon as it stops raining next week and come back with 30 photographs in a day, 3 days straight.
The reason I don’t is that I’m concerned with quality as much as quantity. You could say that hasn’t stopped me so far and I’d appreciate the joke, thank you very much.
It’s all subjective, though. When I say quality, it’s only what I consider to be quality myself. Maybe you don’t think my work so far has been worthy of the term.
All I can do, and what I have to do, is hold myself to my own standards.
That just means trying, and not getting lazy or phoning any shot in. No photographs of scenes or objects or moments, decisive or otherwise, that I look at in other people’s work and find uninspiring.
But there’s a balance to be struck. If you’re shooting 365 street photographs in 365 days, you would do very well for them all to be completely unique.
I’m feeling some of mine are kinda becoming derivatives of others, and avoiding this is something I have to actively work at as the number of shots taken for this project continues to grow.
Speaking of a growing library of photographs, the folder of images that didn’t make the cut grows every time I go out and shoot.
What’s annoying is some of them are better, in my opinion, than some that did get included. This is from the early days when I was sticking to a genuine one-per-day schedule. Now that’s not the case, I may revisit them and see which ones could, or should, be given a second chance.
A couple of easy ways to catch up to 85%, then.
The first – taking a bunch of mindless photographs for the sake of it – I won’t be doing.
The second – revisiting the genuine archives – I might.
Focusing on completing the #leesixtyfive project
With the day-365 deadline for this thing rapidly approaching, the priority has been to just get out and make photographs whenever possible.
I’ve got other stuff going on in life. We all have. I’ve also got plenty of other things I want to get written up and published on this blog.
But, for now, finishing the #leesixtyfive project is the priority.
That means fitting in shooting around real life commitments, and putting other ideas for this blog on ice until this is done. Shiny object syndrome is real, and I’m itching to see how new topics will help grow this website.
However, nothing will help me more personally than seeing this thing through to its end.
Yes, I’m at 64% when I should be 85%. I just have to appreciate how blessed I am to have the opportunity to even get this far, though.
It’s taken drive and commitment (honestly), but a lot of people don’t have the chance to even give those things a try. Not everyone has the time or personal freedom to do so.
Some people don’t even have the health levels to walk the streets making photographs, although Anthony Carbajal shows that perhaps isn’t an excuse all by itself.
If his story doesn’t inspire me to go finish this project, and for you to go do whatever it is you want to do too, I don’t know what will.
So go get it.
