Hello!
Last year I started a Tumblr blog: Semesta Cruinne Tumblr to post pictures of nature (only).
I posted the first photograph on 27th March 2023.
I am happy to announce that it's been 1 year since, and I managed to post on 226 out of 365 days. :)
Notes & Insights
I like the idea of showing up and consistency. I enjoy them as challenges.
I am quite happy with the result. And, of course, any number of photographs is better than zero.
I took December (2023) off, and then it took me 2 months - January and February (2024) to get back to even remembering to post, pushing myself to do it and getting more regular. In future, if I take a break, I'd like to keep it much shorter, or go some other way about it, not sure what that would be.
Some months, I decided on a theme and clicked or chose pictures from my gallery accordingly. It was a good challenge. It completely changed what I noticed, what I looked for, the choice of angles, the extent of zooming, the distance from the object, etc. while clicking, the images I'd select and how I edited.
Editing photos to look natural was fun and now that I'm editing in a particular style (for about a month), this is a fun experiment too. It's a new thing to do, it keeps me engaged.
When I'm outside, stopping when I spot flowers, leaves or trees, or just noticing how dramatic the sky looks - looking, wondering, deciding, and capturing for the blog has been a fun exercise.
Using Lightroom is fun, I get to learn, and try out new things. It's quite a challenge to maintain or somehow add to the image quality of the photos. (They are still often low) When the photographs are simple and not as appealing as are, editing makes all the difference. Almost all the photographs are from the phone, so, I cannot afford to lose the already limited quality, which means I can edit only so much and carefully so.
Including short clips has opened up more possibilities and simultaneously brought to light new challenges and birthed solutions.
Sticking to one ratio (2:3) can be a task.
Cropping images, especially to identify which ones looked better horizontally and which ones vertically, was revealing.
Going for zoom-ins and macro shots, then sometimes wide angle and panorama - broadened the variety of ideas, methods and outcomes. We can thank the change of phone for changing those possibilities. I am often curious and take pictures of the same object using more than one of the camera tools mentioned above.
There are barely any photos from nighttime till now. I barely ever use the camera. I have not played with manual focus enough (yet). I have almost no animals or water bodies in the pictures as of now. I rely on human-made structures more than I want to. There is a lot to explore.
At the risk of sounding irritatingly repetitive, the experience has been - fun and challenging, and all that I observe, learn, understand, deduce and conclude is interesting. To be honest, though, I just watch and observe, think - hmm, and enjoy. I don't try to analyse much and it's fun. I can do it right now, look back at all the photographs I have posted and "think", but I don't know. I guess, just creating and putting it out there, and thinking a MAXIMUM of about 3 days ahead or remembering some details about the ongoing theme - feels like enough. Simple, uncomplicated, fun.
I'm enjoying the journey. :)
I look forward to more days of clicking, editing and posting on
Congratulations to me!
Haha. :)