Apologies & General Change

Yes, I realise that in my last post I said that I would update my blog more frequently and Flickr less so but recently I've been neglecting both. I just wanted to formally apologise for being generally rubbish. So, sorry about that.

Second thing I wanted to talk about was me starting a second blog on this site. I like to think this blog is purely for photography-type topics but unfortunately it's a topic that I usually have very little to speak about, leading this blog to be updated very rarely compared to most blogs I've seen on this site. However, I really like the idea of having a blog, like a diary that doesn't require a working pen (which is something of a rarity in my house). But, having this acting as a purely photography based blog, I'm unable to update and post as much as I'd like to.

All of this is leading me to start a new blog containing snippets of my life, like extracts from an unwritten autobiography. I'll going to try and keep the blogs separate but there probably will be some crossover, with some posts on the general blog having a vague mention of photography at some point.

I'm guessing that my new blog will most likely be about college, exams, university and friends- the typical teenage topics. But I'll try to make it witty. Emphasis on 'try', I may not/probably won't get it right.

So, for general insights into my life you could follow this blog, which will be updated gradually within the next few days, then hopefully more frequently thereafter.

The Abandoning of Project 365

So, for those of you who have read my blog before (or, indeed, if you're my contact on Flickr) you'll probably be aware that I started Project 365 about a month ago and, as you can probably guess from the title of this post, today is the day that I'm announcing my quitting of said project.

I decided that, rather than writing a lengthy description on a photo on Flickr explaining why I'm quitting the project, I should write a blog post explaining the situation that I could just post a link to, which would save time and effort in the long run.

The main reason for quitting my 365 is actually the same reason I was doubting starting it in the first place: I ended up taking photos because I had to rather than because I had an idea and wanted to take a photo. The second- and arguably more important- reason is college. I have a total of 12 days before all of my artwork has to be completed and the art exhibition goes up. I also have 19 days until my first exam. I desperately need to do well in my exams to secure my place at Winchester university and, although in maths I'm pretty much guaranteed to get an A, grades in my other subjects are much less concrete. Especially since my confidence in my English grade has been knocked after finding out that I didn't do so well in my coursework.

Anyway, pretty conventional reasons for people to quit their 365 projects. Sorry I couldn't be more original.

On another note, I've decided to try and update this blog more frequently and my Flickr less frequently, reserving my longer photo descriptions for this blog. Which basically means that, rather than boring my Flickr contacts all the time, I'll be boring my blog followers instead. But only 4 people follow my blog (including myself) so it isn't a big deal. :)

Scanography

Recently, I discovered the, seemingly little-known, art of scanography. It basically involves scanning your face. In fact, I don't even think you need to scan your face but I'm not sure, I don't really know the specifics of it yet.

Anyway, I've only been trying it out for two days and I'm already addicted to it. I find myself discovering new ways of photography and things related to photography recently and becoming a little bit obsessed with them. First it was freelensing and now this. Who knows what next?

This is perhaps my favourite scanography shot I've taken(?) so far:

And now I have the topic question for my new art project at college, I can actually incorporate scanography into it. The topic is 'collections of everyday objects', which is very broad, I know. But, well, they always are in art. That's one of the best (and sometimes worst) things about it.

Here are a few other shots I took to link to my art project:

And I'm hoping for plenty more great shots to come. Better shots, fingers crossed.

Inspiration vs. A Good Photo

About 3 months ago I got my first DSLR (he's called Gregory) and have been using him almost every day since then. But I was wondering if there's a strong positive correlation (yeah, I do A-level Statistics) between a photographer's inspiration and the quality of the resulting photo.

Up until recently I didn't get inspired by anything, I just took photos of things I thought looked nice, and my photos were consistently average. Case in point:

But now I've actually got inspiration (which seemed to be the moment I started doing self portraits), my photos appear to be consistently below average. Such as:

However, when I look at other people's photos on Flickr, the photos that were inspired by something or someone- whether that be a friend, a film, a song or just a line of text- tend to be the most interesting shots of theirs.

Is there just a fault in brain that's constantly giving me bad ideas? Or am I just terrible at executing ideas- so bad that I actually execute them? I think I may be the murderer of good ideas.