Last week I took part in a project called America 24-7. You can read more about the project if you follow that link, but the basic premise is that for one week, 24 hours a day, thousands of photographers (hundreds of thousands, according to the website) took digital pictures that they then submitted to a central location. The organizers of the project hired professional photographers to take part in this, but they also accepted submissions from anybody else who wanted to participate. The best of the photographs will be published in books and on websites.
The point of this is that all last week, I carried my digital camera around with me all the time, like I used to, back when I first bought it. And what happened is that I took a lot of photographs of things that I otherwise wouldn't have, and I ended up with photographs that I wouldn't have otherwise had. Photographs that I liked. Photographs full of color and movement and light and dark and silliness and seriousness and weirdness and every day-ness; what I liked most about the pictures, in fact, was not the individual artistry of any one or two particular photos, but the differences between them. The range of life they captured and displayed (if that doesn't sound too high-falutin').
Ok, maybe the real point of this is that when the week was over, and I had taken all of these pictures for the project, I started wondering why I don't take more pictures all of the time, for my own projects. So last night I started taking more pictures. And here they are.
These are the abstract photos.
And these are the pictures of the city, on our way in from I-290.
And below are the pictures of one of my very favorite Chicago photo subjects: Buckingham Fountain. (See the blurriness in a lot of them? That's because it's damn hard to hold a camera still for 1 or 2 seconds, especially when it's windy and you're shivering from the cold. Based in large part on these photographs, I finally broke down today and ordered myself a tripod! I'm excited! I'll be a professional yet!)
Blurriness aside, you can see why I love Buckingham Fountain, can't you?
The point of this is that all last week, I carried my digital camera around with me all the time, like I used to, back when I first bought it. And what happened is that I took a lot of photographs of things that I otherwise wouldn't have, and I ended up with photographs that I wouldn't have otherwise had. Photographs that I liked. Photographs full of color and movement and light and dark and silliness and seriousness and weirdness and every day-ness; what I liked most about the pictures, in fact, was not the individual artistry of any one or two particular photos, but the differences between them. The range of life they captured and displayed (if that doesn't sound too high-falutin').
Ok, maybe the real point of this is that when the week was over, and I had taken all of these pictures for the project, I started wondering why I don't take more pictures all of the time, for my own projects. So last night I started taking more pictures. And here they are.
These are the abstract photos.
And these are the pictures of the city, on our way in from I-290.
And below are the pictures of one of my very favorite Chicago photo subjects: Buckingham Fountain. (See the blurriness in a lot of them? That's because it's damn hard to hold a camera still for 1 or 2 seconds, especially when it's windy and you're shivering from the cold. Based in large part on these photographs, I finally broke down today and ordered myself a tripod! I'm excited! I'll be a professional yet!)
Blurriness aside, you can see why I love Buckingham Fountain, can't you?
