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Here we are, the end of June, almost July. We’ve made it to the midpoint of the year, and I’m halfway through my project 365. I want to use this opportunity to take a moment to think critically about where I want to go with the rest of the project. It seems like there’s a choice to be made to either finish out the year going along as I have, posting shots of convenience when they present themselves. Or, I could try to proactively seek out and apply new techniques and themes. I was reading David Hobby the other day and this turn of phrase stuck in my mind.
I can tell you from experience that there is nothing like a long-term project to expose your “camera expertise” as nothing more than a bag of tricks — and a shallow bag of tricks at that.
How shallow is my bag? Shallow. Would it be more interesting to make it deeper? Definintely. How do I do that? I have some specific thoughts on implementation but would rather share them on their successful execution. But I’m also open to suggestions from le galleria de legumes. I know that I want what comes next to further diverge from my standard POTD stream and the world’s cutest husky that lies therein. Also, I know that I want this effort to be more considered than it has been in the past.
Only two of maija this month, thank you very much…
March in California, in like a lamb, out like a slightly warmer lamb enjoying a little more light each afternoon. It was getting complicated for me to keep track of the days of the year but fortunately NASA has a solution to that problem. This has been a good month for 365 – not because this batch is particularly great but because of all the friends in town gave me plenty of excuses to find new things to shoot. May April be so lucky!
For those interesting in keeping track of photo equity, seven of the thirty-one rock the dog while there are only two of CNHB & one of SMHB. Sadly, there are squat zip zero of yjp.
An utterly brilliant day here. Wet fuzz and I braved the sand sharks this morning, then later the Team Hevelone-Byler diaspora ran a total of forty-eight(!) miles, generously averaging out to a sweet sixteen each. As month number two comes to an end, project three sixty-five rolls on with photos thirty-two to fifty-nine. Thanks to everyone who left comments along the way this month – they really are motivating and do rather make me happy. Cheers!
Who amongst you is really loved? Valentine’s Day seems as good a time as any to assess our popular metric of true love, tagged photos.
Huh. Well being at the bottom of the siblings category there is a big honking suxXor. And while it may feel egalitarian that no clear favorite among them baby nieces has broken from the pack, if we age adjusted Lily-monster would be dominating the big girls. Just for fun, here’s a quick check on the four possible combinations of baby nieces: Victoria/Isabelle (30), Isabelle/Lily (2), Lily/Victoria (1) and all three at once (12). That’s it? What the frick ya’ll? Clearly there’s room for improvement on some of those big girl+baby combinations.
Alright. My puppy valentine & I are off for a run to the ocean. Hope all ya’ll bicorporal types have fun and food and flowers and so on (ad nauseum) today.
The first month of my 2009 three hundred sixty-five project. There’s some overlap here with my regular POTDs but I’m making an effort to make them distinct.
My POTDs have been kinda sucking it up as of late as once again I find myself stuck in deadly boring cycle of work/darkness/lack of friends within a two thousand mile radius. Fortunately, the new Maija Nell Fan Club is BLOWIN’ UP. Seven members! That’s bigger than our friggin’ Jingle Blast turnout. Bigger than DOG-A-PALOOZA! BIGGER THAN SCROWYARRR!!!
Since it’s easier to blame equipment for mediocre results than my motivation or opportunity, I’ve decided throwing money at the problem is the most logical solution. I’m not sure if a half month’s rent, a full month’s, or trading in my car’s worth of irresponsibility will do the trick. Stay tuned for critical updates.
To get photos from one person, we’re use categories. Here are my mother’s, father’s, etc.
We can look at tags just within a person’s shots. For instance, CNHB’s shots of maija.
We can require two tags to present. For example, both SMHB and Maija.
How about two tags (like above) but from a specific person? Say, CNHB’s shots of SMHB in the rain?
Point being, this can quickly get pretty random (Maija in the snow at sunset in Allston?). Fun tymes.
Who can work on a day like today? It’s already 2:30 EST, only a few more hours til the fun starts. Happy voting everyone!
Oh, and Jeff is doing dessert preference/exit polling.
My friggin camera is broken. This is emblematic of how the whole day has gone. Were I not a generally pessimistic and irritable person I could pretend the encroaching shadow across the frame was making some sort of insightful point about the early onset darkness that marks the end of daylight savings time. Instead I’m just kinda bummed about the whole of it all, resigned to sitting here enjoying my Vitamin D deficiency. Woo hypocalcemic tetany!
Nineteen months of photoblogging crashed spectacularly today. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, given the wildly obsolete and randomly modified teeter-totter type drupal structure we had propping it up, though, yo be transparent though, it was totally my fault. The accident broke innumerable posts on quasify and elsewhere around our corner of the internets. I hope those directly impacted (particularly wee Hondo) can embrace the misfortune for it’s upside, a new chance at a fresh start. It will probably take the rest of this month to transition as I try to port the mangled remnants of the database over to Wordpress and get the old posts back up. Please email if you need instructions on how to proceed with the new site.
In the meantime (speaking of iPhone-wielding little dorks) ZENYX is up and rockin in, mobo-style.
At long last, voting is closed and the results are in. Thanks to all those who participated in Dog-a-palooza, be it directly by submitting shots (and then voting) or in a more oblique fashion by voting for this or that unrelated thing. Also thanks for those helpful suggestions on the very real issue of POTD subject equity.
I’m going to attempt to try to sidestep the sort of controversy surrounding the math in the hevelonian anniversary post by using three different scoring methods to determine the winner. First (and most democratically) I’ll use a quasitative analysis to pull the presumed top vote from each comment. Second, I’ll give each mentioned shot a vote, regardless of it being indicated a clear favorite, as the instructions mentioned legality of multiple votes. Lastly, I’ll keep to the one comment one vote concept but split the voting power up based on the number of shots mentioned. For our purposes a three-way split is worth 0.33 points.
Top vote per person:
Winner: Puppy Kisses, 3pts
1st runner up: Moon Doggy, One more, blue eye, The Winning Shot, 1pt each
Multiple votes per person:
Winner: Puppy Kisses, 5pts,
1st runner up: One more, blue eye, The Winning Shot, Doll dog, 2pts each
Fractional voting:
Winner: Puppy Kisses, 1.58pt
1st runner up: Moon Doggy , 1pt
So, by all three measures the overall winner here is Puppy Kisses, below. Congratulations Nell! Please pick up your BFP ($25 gift certificate to Best in Show) in person at the BFP prize window (located at 510 26th Ave, San Francisco)! As a bonus prize, you’ve earned your very own menu link along the hevelonian top header menu. Thanks again everyone for playing!
Last night’s POTD (number one million in an infinite series) suggested a theme: “Stuff My Dog Hides Under.” Ok so it’s not quite Stuff on My Cat but we have to work with what we’ve got to work with.
The covers
Amplifiers
Bushes
Koreans
Coffee Tables
Power cords (hay muchos sobre la cabeza aqui)
The water (archival dogshark)
Arial snow attacks
This past Saturday marked the one year anniversary of our photoblog project. In the past year we’ve had a total of 831 submissions from ten different users spanning four continents (Australia – you’re next). I’ve been debating (mostly, with myself via non-stop internal monologue) how to manage the project in an ongoing manner. I’m not sure if it’s best to keep this project self hosted on drupal or to move it to an external service (likely flickr or picasa) that would handle hosting, resizing, headaches and whatnot. But regardless of any technical issues, we’ve still made it a full year, so by way of celebration here are the ten most popular tags as of this morning.
Thanks again to those who contribute to this and looking forward to another good year!
It’s been six-plus months now (and some six hundred pictures) since my little sister and I started our daily photo blog. In the past few weeks, it’s become increasingly difficult to find something visually interesting as part of the daily course of existence that we haven’t already examined to death. There are only so many routes I can take from my apartment to my job back to my house. There are only so many bands I can justify including, only so many displaced affection shots of my dog, only so many critters to give chase to. Given the encroaching darkness of fall, this is going to get harder rather than easier for the last six months of the project. So, I’m just putting out there – I’m open to ideas for new themes to explore. A study of museums? Convenience stores? Stairwells? Permanent vacation?
I made Alexandra a button.
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