12-month photo project – first lessons taught

My hubby and I have made four little trips since the beginning of the year to get some interesting photos of buildings for the first month of our 12-month photo project and already those little trips taught me a few lessons that I would like to share with you.

Lesson 1: Take your time
If you are busy, you usually don’t want to waste the time you have and hurry in many regards. But photography needs certain slowing down, pushing away other matters and paying full attention to what you see, what you perceive, what you are looking for. Thinking about it, making your choices, using a tripod if necessary, and especially not regretting the time you needed for the shooting, even if results are not as wonderful as you hoped. They will be better next time.

I took the following photos of the church and a few details from its premises in Vícov u Přeštic. The first captures were of the obvious, the church, after some time of being there I started to play with other ideas.

Lesson 2: Don’t forget that when you shoot with someone else at the same place, even the same theme, your shooting is NOT meaningless, even if the other person is a better photographer than you are
Isn’t it interesting that when you place two (or more) people in the same spot and tell them to capture the place with their cameras, their sets of photos will be very different from one another? I get this experience over and over.

Many years ago, my hubby and I bought an analogue SLR that was able to focus automatically, it was our first Canon SLR camera. It would have been too expensive for us to buy two cameras so we had just that one and were using it both. Although so much time has passed, I remember like it was yesterday that while on a trip to mountains, we came to a place with a great view and my hubby, who was holding the camera, took a photo of that scene and I walked away, disappointed that it wasn’t my turn to shoot. He tried to persuade me that I could shoot as well and take my own photos but I was stubborn and refused. Nowadays I know better but I need to be reminded of the fact again and again, it is still difficult to absorb.

I took the following photos in Beroun and although my hubby likes them, he admits that he wasn’t inspired by the scenes during our stay in the town at all…

Lesson 3: Focus on your goal
For every month of our project, there is a theme, and January is represented by “buildings”. On those little trips, my hubby focused on the theme diligently, made his effort to capture buildings and already has a variety of interesting captures. I have a few photos up my sleeve as well but I can see that I got easily distracted. As our son remarked when he saw our photos from the last trip – “I see, dad took photos of buildings while mom of everything else.” Exaggerated, but true. In Dobřany I took a photo of an advertising stand, a bench, even a tractor…

There are buildings in the photos but just as part of the background, they should be the featured part. I like the photos and I’m glad I took them because next time the scenes don’t have to be there but time is a scarce commodity and if you devote it to one thing, you can’t devote it to another. Also, I am sure that my focusing on the details instead of on the theme itself is no chance, we tend to do what is easier for us, don’t we?

Lessons to be continued…