All of the experts say that if you want to improve your photography you need to take lots of photos. The best way to accomplish that is to take pictures on daily basis. Several months ago I started a project that got me to take photos on a daily basis. Back in July of this year I started a photoblog called My Drive.
At my old job I would drive into work before sunrise each day and I usually would be heading home around sunset. Each morning I would see great photographic opportunities as the sun rose above the horizon. So I started to bring my camera each day and I would shoot what looked good from the car. On the drive home I would see remarkable sunsets and I would shoot images from the car on the way home. As I was driving I would see something remarkable and I would point my camera in the general direction and fire multiple frames blind out the window. YES, I kept my eyes on the road when driving, all of my shots were either shot without looking, stopped at a light, or pulled over by the road. Every once in a while something would be worth posting to my website.
I have now been without a job since the middle of November and I'm finding I'm really missing this project. I still try to bring my camera with me on outings, but I'm not driving during the magic hours any longer, so the good shots are very hard to come by. I will keep posting images when I get them, but my focus for now is on finding a new job.
While I was working on the mydrive project I noticed several missed photos on the days I didn't bring my camera or was not able to pull off a blind shot.
A perfect example is a wonderful scene I saw about a month ago. While driving to work one morning I was heading down my street. The sun was just rising above the horizon and the rays of the sun were filtering through the trees on the horizon. It was the type of shot I see on a regular basis and would have been enough for me to grab for the camera to try and get the shot. However, also at that time a landscaper was riding a mower cutting the grass, he was heading straight towards the scene I was looking at. Right as he was about to be silhouetted by the sun he hit patch of dirt and a cloud of dust was thrown in the air by the mower. It was the perfect silhouette of the man on the mower, a halo of dust, and yellow sun rays filtered through the trees in the horizon and giving him a wonderful halo of light. It was a wonderful scene. Even though I didn't have a camera with me at the time, I brought my hand to my face as if I had a camera and made a camera click sound to capture the moment in my mind. I still remember it vividly to this day and I don't think I would have noticed it if I wasn't in the practice to always be looking for photos.
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