After reading this week’s resources on photography I have only started to realise how much I have to learn. I never considered myself a great photographer and I am quite happy to let other people hold the camera. Whenever I wanted to express myself creatively, I used words. This shows in my Daily Create activities, especially in the first ones, where I felt the need to supplement my photo with words:

The Daily Create 146 – a photo that represents destruction

If I wanted something to be in the photo and it wasn’t there, I used words to conjure it up:

The Daily Create 147 – a picture containing stone, water and clouds

But I persisted. I took a photo a day, often after I had come home from work. I worked with what I had and what I didn’t have that late at night was natural light. So, a pattern started to emerge. Minimalistic and mostly monochrome.

When you rely on what you have, you start using metaphors and then you realise that telling a story through photography is not that different from using words. The Daily Create 149 gave us an impossible task – to take a photo at six minutes past the hour for an entire day and to share only one picture. I decided to take a photo at six minutes after the day had passed:

I recycled the above image and used it as a CD cover ( you can see the relevant post here). I am grateful to Chad for this idea.

This picture shows envy:

 I do envy people who can eat cakes and not put on weight, so I recycled this picture and used it as a demotivating poster. You can see it in my previous post.

I also envy people who would have done a better job with this photograph than I did. I took the photo through a shop window and it shows. I tried editing it and it got slightly better, but I am still not happy with it.

While I am not particularly good with the camera, I am quite happy to use picture editors. Ever since Picnik got invaded by ants (rest in peace, Picnik), PicMonkey has been my faithful friend. I used it to edit all of the above photos, but it really came in handy here:

The Daily Create 153 – the oldest building in my neighbourhood

I have to be honest with you – this building is from the 1980s and it is, in fact, the building I live in. It was really hot outside today and I was too lazy to leave my air-conditioned flat. So I took a picture of what I could see from my balcony and aged it artificially using PicMonkey. I can’t tell you exactly what I did – I kept clicking on different effects until I was happy with the result.

I experimented with different types of focal effects here:

The Daily Create 148 – Out of Focus

To sum up: What have I learned this week?

1. That I am slowly beginning to get addicted to photography. That I don’t care whether I am producing art or just fooling around. As long as it is fun, I will continue doing it.

2. That I want to learn more about photography and that I will continue learning.

3. That looking at the world through the lens is not distracting. On the contrary. It makes me more aware of my surroundings.

4. That ordinary things and everyday objects have their own beauty.

5. That this is my life. Whether I am manipulating an image of myself until I look like my grandmother did 70 years ago or taking pictures of yesterday’s shopping list, this is who I am.

See you in the next Daily Create.