Five Thousand Photos: Highlights

I can't really say that I have a favourite photo from this project. The images cover a broad range of subjects and techniques, and the emphasis on production over polish means that the quality level is pretty variable. But the nice thing about this kind of project is that it's inevitable that some themes and patterns emerge. So here are my favourites of those.


4893/4897: Slow Shutter

The Canon S100 does slow shutter speeds the way the Panasonic TS3 does swimming. Of the 249 photos from my S100, 74 of them were long exposures. Night, day, indoors, underground; from moving cars, trains, buses, and while walking; handheld, on a tripod, sitting on the ground or swinging around. It was just as much fun as taking photos underwater, with the same creative uncertainty, but much easier to do in the winter.


1111/1112: Underwater

Most of my underwater photos were taken with the camera no more than elbow-deep: I'm not exactly a man of adventure. In fact, almost half of them are from the same fountain, which had nice clear water and some attractive waterfalls. Only one was taken in a natural body of water, and a few – like 1111/1112 – were taken from a swimming pool. While it's outside the scope of this series, I also took some underwater video of this pool cleaner in action, which was a lot of fun.


 3984/3985: Documenting Lawlessness

I had fun with this particular stretch of road and its chronic problem with illegally parked cars, but getting two of them at once was something special. See also 533/534, which is the photo that started me looking for more opportunities.


1500/1500: Personal Themes

This photo includes Franz Kline's 'White Forms', painted in 1955. I visited this piece several times while it was visiting the Art Gallery of Ontario; it normally lives in MoMA, which is where I took the photo that it echoes. There are several other times within the project where I've revisited an earlier image, but none that I like as much as this pair.


1322/1322: Light Bulb Series

Working with a camera that allows very little creative control can be frustrating, but I made the best of it by abusing my TS3's exposure compensation button. I had a fun week looking for different shapes and styles of lightbulbs to photograph. I made a couple of other attempts at mini-projects, but none were as good as this one. The idea of a single-subject project is one that I might want to revisit some day.


1725/1731: Cheerleading

In a rare display of planning and math, I created a sequence of photos that spelled out "PENNY", and it was completed on our wedding anniversary. I have to say that it's the cleverest thing I accomplished with this project, and it didn't go unnoticed. But the logistics of finding a good example of each letter in the right sequence – backwards – was daunting enough to keep me from trying another word or phrase. Besides, why keep doing something that has already been a success?

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So this concludes my Five Thousand Photo project. This is post number six hundred, and no more will be added.

This has been fun. Thanks for checking in.