{"id":1001,"date":"2019-04-12T17:09:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-12T11:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lensq.com\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2019-04-12T17:09:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-12T11:39:07","slug":"365-days-photography-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/12\/365-days-photography-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"365 Days Photography Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On an office trip to Ooty, friend asked, \u201c I noticed that you have been clicking photos in a moving vehicle. May I see how they came out?\u201d I showed her the pictures. \u201cYou are such a talented photographer\u201d, she said. \u201cI am 216 days photographer. Not a talented one.\u201d I replied. Habits can take you to places which talent can\u2019t. <\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tried 365 day elevate challenge but couldn\u2019t keep the streak for more than 95 days. I wanted to try the same with Duolingo but all I could do was for 52 days. I read more than 40 books a year but couldn\u2019t maintain a streak of 365 days. But photography is my first ever 365 day streak and it wasn\u2019t difficult at all.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What made the 365 challenge possible?<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is handy. I don\u2019t need to gather resources for it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is quick. It doesn\u2019t take more than a minute.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It gives immense pleasure to capture something beautiful.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of all, it was natural for me to click daily than look at it as a challenge which I had to work towards.All other challenges were tough because they needed some time and mental energy. The others were not giving me instant pleasure.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 365 days Journey<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I already wrote about the first <a href=\"http:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/20\/100-day-photography-challenge\/\">100 day journey <\/a>here. I was at one of the lowest points of my life on the end of the 100 day journey and hardly had any energy to continue clicking. A lot of my friends thought it was foolish of me to leave a passion which kept me happy during that phase. <\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was worried about not finding any more objects to click. But then came the rainy season. It was a disadvantage that sun started setting before I could leave office but capturing the rain drops, mud pools and the cloudy skies was ultimate fun. The place I was staying was close to a lake. I could sight a lot of birds which became my new subjects. Sadly, great bird pictures can\u2019t be captured with a phone camera.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After that, I found a meditation teacher, every corner of whose house was an Instagram worthy picture and she stayed right next to a beach. That gave a boost to my photography. <\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was saturated with the type of clicks I could click with my average phone camera and needed an upgrade. Hence I bought One Plus 6 to treat myself for completing the 6 months of photography. The picture color quality had increased by multiple folds that I stopped using editing apps to get my desired color contrast. I was travelling a bit then and \u00a0fell in love with clicking pictures from trains.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My photography skills took a new shape when I went on an office trip to Ooty. Strangers became friends just by clicking a few creative shots of them. They made me the \u2018official photographer of the trip\u2019 and also for any office celebrations. That was a new identity.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another upgrade happened when I got an opportunity to do maternity photo shoot for a friend. I always thought that I can\u2019t click great pictures of people but there I couldn\u2019t believe that my friend loved those photos.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a few weeks, there was nothing new to click. I was just playing with lights and shadows, leaves and flowers until I went to a friend\u2019s wedding. I always wanted to try wedding photography after watching all the stills on Instagram. Here I had my chance to experiment and learn. Looking at my passion, the photographer asked me if I were the bride side photographer. The best thing that happened that day was I could click the candids which the professional photographer couldn\u2019t. Photography made me learn to be alert to the smallest nuances of people.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Out of the blue, I got into wildlife photography. A borrowed DSLR and a lake right in front of my house, I couldn\u2019t ask for more in life. I clicked some of the best shots I ever did. I couldn\u2019t thank my husband enough for the wonderful location he bestowed me with.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, at the end of one year, I don\u2019t feel it is an achievement but rather a milestone in many more years to come.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next steps<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Practice makes man perfect is an old saying. The present world is changing ever so fast that you need to focus on continuous improvements to stay relevant. On the occasion of completing 365 days of photography, I reached out to a couple of photographer friends for their inputs on how I can improve. The following are there suggestions.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Focus on an object so that there is a foreground and a contrasting background <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Edit the pictures so that they come close to the original picture I had in mind<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Explore manual photography to the fullest<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Bring a story in the picture<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Also, I would like to do more courses on photography, travel more and discover my style.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Which 365 days challenge were you able to stick to?<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Happy 365 day Challenge!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On an office trip to Ooty, friend asked, \u201c I noticed that you have been clicking photos in a moving vehicle. May I see how they came out?\u201d I showed &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-habits","has-meta has-sticky-meta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lensq.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}