2024 Personal Photography Projects

[mollyc]

Now that we are into December, how many of you have started to think about what kind of personal projects you might tackle in 2024? I have a couple I'm mulling about but really quite torn on what to do, as I worry I am trying to start too many things.

Here are some of things I am thinking about:

• Participating in a P52. I will not be running another P52 here for 2024; I am happy to have hosted but think it has run its course (once we finish the last few weeks of course) However, a friend of mine is hosting an open-ended P52 and I will likely try that one where I have more flexibility. My P52 was prompt based but hers is more open-ended.
• Participating in the above P52 but solely on film.
• A 365 on film. This is the one that I keep coming back to but I worry that it is a logistical nightmare (I also tend to overthink things ). I completed a 365 in 2018 and have never been able to complete another, and those were digital. I have multiple film cameras and it finally occurred to me that I can dedicate a single camera to a 365 (and I could change cameras throughout the year) to make this easier, but we have a couple potential vacations we are discussing and they would be international flights, and I am really not sure I want to deal with the hassle of flying overseas with film. We are not huge travelers, but my daughter is a senior in high school, so a bigger trip is more likely in the cards before she leaves for college. (On the other hand, we talk a big game about traveling but rarely do anymore so going overseas might not even happen.)
• Shooting film as my primary medium. I could almost do this, and just use digital for things like my kids' sports, but I have one digital camera and lens combo that I absolutely adore and I don't think I could keep it on a shelf for a year. I really respect people who do this as a challenge, and I definitely see the benefits of gear limitation, not overshooting, etc., but I just can't not use one of my cameras for a whole year. So this has already been basically crossed off my list.

Clearly I am feeling called to film for 2024 and I just need to work out a way to make it sustainable for me. In 2023 I only shot four rolls of film, plus 20 or so Instax photos. In 2022 I shot 19. I really want to work more with film next year and just need to figure out the best way to make it work while maintaining my sanity.

What projects are you considering or have you decided on? I'd love to be inspired by everyone here and maybe something one of you have planned will spark a different project for me. 🙂

 

[tizeye]

While intrigued with film and feeling the urge to upgrade to medium format, it is more..."if it happens, it happens".
More likely...
1) Convert all slides (and some negatives) to digital to give to family preserving history, and archival duplicates as slides degrade over time. I actually did this with my mother and father's slides and gave to my brother and sisters as their keepsake.
2) Become more proficient with photo painting. Great subjects would be those slides that were poor exposure but great composition to begin with or show significant degrading even with other restorative techniques attempted. Painting washes the photographic flaws away as the photo essentially becomes the slate for the artist brush.

 

[dimme]

I plan to go through my slides and negatives from my film days. I scanned all of my "hero" shots years ago when I worked at the lab and had access to film scanners. Now I want to go through the boxes again and see if there are ant gems I missed. I also would like to shoot more macro photography possibly in a "studio environment" (my garage). I enjoyed doing that type of work years ago with film, with digital it may be fun to experiment with different types of lights.

 

[_timo_redux_]

Every year, for almost twenty years now, I've spent early December doing a yearly photo book ... as I'm back to being in the thick of it right now, it feels hard to think of new projects in the upcoming year.

But it's an interesting question. Earlier this year I finished two long challenges. Ten years ago I started a 365 and just kept going, passing a ten year mark. I'm also kind of a metadata geek ... a long time ago I started keeping a log of shutter actuations, and this year hit a milestone.

These projects have been about getting me out of the house with a camera in hand, and so I guess I'll keep going, because I like this hobby, and I've learned a lot about how I best make pictures, which is that I often find pictures, which in turn means the more I shoot, the more I find ... up to a point. Working on that balance between shooting too little and too much is an ongoing "project."

I've also found travel is hugely satisfying for shooting pictures (duh), in my case because my eye feels refreshed. To this end, i keep a list of long walks I want to do even here in town ... just need to block out time to do them.

But perhaps one specific project for 2024: I want to ramp up my printing. Lots to learn there. Printing is hard.

 

[Strider64]

My main photography Project is to get all my digital photos organized, so I bought a NAS (Synology 923+) so I can do it locally. I have nothing against the cloud, but while the initial costs is expensive for a NAS the fact that I can physically store the images on a hard drive then take it to a safety deposit box if I wanted too brings piece of mind. The added feature of being able to share my images to family and friends selectively without worrying too much of the images being stolen by a security breach is nice. Yes, the images still can be stolen, but it's makes it harder to do so in my opinion.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Realistically with work I don't have the time to shoot everyday or even every week. But I do want to do more photography in 2024 than I did this year. Just need to find the time!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Just to get into the habit of taking the camera out, - taking it with me when I head out, or when I travel somewhere, - having it close to hand and remembering that it exists and should be used - and taking pictures, would be a start.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Just to get into the habit of taking the camera out, - taking it with me when I head out, or when I travel somewhere, - having it close to hand and remembering that it exists and should be used - and taking pictures, would be a start.

Any plans to get a digital one?

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Any plans to get a digital one?

Not yet, or, not now.

 

[mollyc]

Just to get into the habit of taking the camera out, - taking it with me when I head out, or when I travel somewhere, - having it close to hand and remembering that it exists and should be used - and taking pictures, would be a start.

and then get scans of them too! join the potd.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

While intrigued with film and feeling the urge to upgrade to medium format, it is more..."if it happens, it happens".
More likely...
1) Convert all slides (and some negatives) to digital to give to family preserving history, and archival duplicates as slides degrade over time. I actually did this with my mother and father's slides and gave to my brother and sisters as their keepsake.
....

FWIW. I would suggest looking into doing this via your camera. If you have a lens that will focus close to 1;1 and good contrast control in camera, you can save a ton of time as compared to scanning. With my 4x5s I had good success with B&W negs and transparencies. Some of the Colour negs I did go back and scan digitally. These tended to be the negs that had suffered most from retained silver and the associated fogging.

 

[mollyc]

FWIW. I would suggest looking into doing this via your camera. If you have a lens that will focus close to 1;1 and good contrast control in camera, you can save a ton of time as compared to scanning. With my 4x5s I had good success with B&W negs and transparencies. Some of the Colour negs I did go back and scan digitally. These tended to be the negs that had suffered most from retained silver and the associated fogging.

I camera scan all my film. My local lab charges $9 for developing and another $9 for standard scans (2400x3600px) or $28 for high quality (4492x6774px). I scan with my Z6, so 24mp files. I've more than made up for the cost of the hardware I needed to accumulate for camera scanning (light pad, film holders, etc) but I did already have the macro lens and camera body. Then you also need conversion software.

At my lab I think it's less expensive to scan at the time of development, vs sending out old film. Plus you run the risk of loss or damage sending out film.

But there is also the time equation to factor in, whether you want to be tied to a scanning set up for days or weeks on end.

All that said, I am a proponent of camera scanning.

 

[fauxtog]

I would love to complete a P52.

 

[mollyc]

I would love to complete a P52.

are you on facebook? my friend is running one there.

 

[fauxtog]

No I don't have a facebook account. I might join a 52-week on another photo forum or just do my own thing.

 

[cogi0490]

I camera scan all my film. My local lab charges $9 for developing and another $9 for standard scans (2400x3600px) or $28 for high quality (4492x6774px). I scan with my Z6, so 24mp files. I've more than made up for the cost of the hardware I needed to accumulate for camera scanning (light pad, film holders, etc) but I did already have the macro lens and camera body. Then you also need conversion software.

At my lab I think it's less expensive to scan at the time of development, vs sending out old film. Plus you run the risk of loss or damage sending out film.

But there is also the time equation to factor in, whether you want to be tied to a scanning set up for days or weeks on end.

All that said, I am a proponent of camera scanning.

Once again thank you very much for bringing up this topic. I will probably bring in my first 2 rolls of film tomorrow- price is more or less the same here. So if I will use regularly film, I must definitely think about your proposed option! Never heard of that before as film newbie ✌️

 

[someoldguy]

For 2024 .....
1: Try to get back to doing weekly 'field trips' with a camera of some sort .
2: Resume the seemingly endless task of scanning slides and negs . As a birthday present to me ; I got one of those camera slide scanning attachments a few months back . Starting to get cold so I'll have lots of time (maybe)
3: Do a monthly series of photos of the same place , same camera/lens , and approximately the same time of month/day . I've done this a couple of times over the years , just not recently .
4: Shoot some B&W film . And develop the negs.

 

[citysnaps]

I'm considering another San Francisco project where I engage strangers on the street for some conversation and a few portraits, resulting in a MagCloud-published journal.

It would be themed around where San Francisco is going (hopefully forward), in consideration of the problems (homelessness, Fentanyl, street crime, gentrification, etc) the city's been facing over the last dozen years. I'd start that in the late Spring.

Also noodling doing the above along with video interviews in different neighborhoods - something new for me.

 

[mollyc]

So I think I've finally decided my projects. I don't come up with specific projects every year but I find I grow in unexpected ways when I do.

1. A Year on Film. This is intended to be a 365 (well, 366 this year), but we will be doing more traveling this year, if for no other reason that my daughter will be off to college in the fall. I don't think I can actually commit to a daily photo on film. So my real goal is to shoot as daily as possible, but to stage it by a roll per month. This way if I miss a day, I haven't ruined the whole project; and if it works out that I am able to shoot one frame every day, so much the better, but a friend of mine did it as a roll per month for 2023 and it's been fun seeing her progress. I think a roll a month is a much better way to approach it for me. I will shoot other rolls of film also, but the specific roll per month will be treated like a P365 as much as possible. It also allows for a couple of extra frames a day if something else comes up.

2. A single themed P52. This will likely be done on digital, although I'm not opposed to shooting some on film along the way. I feel quite strongly that a P52 should have an overarching structure - whether it's one theme a week, a theme per month, a gear limitation. There is no real challenge to take a single photo a week; it's not hard, you don't really learn anything, and most dedicated photographers already shoot at least once a week, and if they don't it's for good reason like travel or illness. Another friend of mine has organized a group for P52ers where we each choose our own topic for the year. I've been thinking about this for quite a while - at least a month - and have settled on "found still life." This is not really my own idea, I follow someone who has really inspired me to look for these little moments of observation of light, objects, etc. They are almost always a still life of some sort, but nothing that he has posed or arranged himself. Think a chair, a table setting, a lamp in a hotel lobby. I've done a couple of images this year and it's an area I'd like to explore more to pull me out of only nature stuff.

3. A collaborative project. I've approached yet a third friend for each of us to come up with a list of topics, and twice a month we will each use that topic to shoot a photo and then we will post together to see how we have interpreted the concept.

Beyond this, I will still do my frequent photo walks with my dog and other around the house stuff. I already shoot and share almost every day, although I've taken a purposeful break the past week or so with the holidays (have done some shooting, little sharing).

I've loved reading about the things other people have planned and I hope you each share some of your work here throughout the year. 🙂

 

[_timo_redux_]

As I wrote before early December is always this mad race to get a photo annual completed, in time for printers to print and for me to wrap as presents.

This year was no exception, and I was once again reminded of what works OK and what is less smooth. I do miss how one could make decent books straight out of Aperture (and iPhoto before it) ... now we've been reduced to plug-ins for Photos.app on the one hand, or book-publisher-level software (and all its attendant complications) on the other.

Even though I have many year's experience using one publisher's plug in, this year I still had to circle back to their help desk, which wasn't that helpful, before figuring that maybe Photos.app plus a plug-in doesn't like it when your library and project isn't on the internal APFS drive (in my case, within Photos.app the project kept spawning new versions of itself, while at other times changes will not be saved, and as we all know, there's no way to manually save a change in Photos.app.)

Some kind of permissions-teething problem, to be sure, and while I get that Apple's transition to a more secure OS is noble it quite often leaves this kind of permissions craziness as a problem for a tiny few who have e.g., external drives they work from, or some other non-standard, non iCloud variant of their workflow.

***

So one project for next year might be to migrate to something more robust / less unpredictable than Photos.app for a book. Maybe. There's always a hump with learning new software, and to be sure there's no guarantee new systems won't have their own special problems. And said layout programs output has to be non-fussy enough for whatever book publisher who will eventually print it. So I'll noodle this again for awhile (meaning most likely I'll punt and just use Photos.app again next November.)

Another photo project idea feels more flexible and interesting. I liked participating in the P52 threads last year. I've been thinking about photo projects with the theme of favorite places. For awhile I was wondering if I could do a 365 of a place ... my twist is it's OK to reach into the library for older efforts so that one can miss a day or even a week while still having enough photos. But then I was thinking 365 of anything is a lot (as a product. I'm OK with doing 365s, as I've been shooting daily for 11 years.)

What I am inspired by is the constraint of time: having photos showing the varieties of a place, but also throughout the year. So not just that one glorious day in May, but also what can you make out of a dull February stretch of winter.
Following that 365 is way too much (even over 5-12 years) why not, P52-style, one representative photo for each week of a year? A 52 photo collection sounds both more manageable and more interesting to someone else viewing it.

I still like the idea of anchoring the project with great photos already made, and just rounding it out with extra photo walks on a P52 schedule. A bit tricky to search the archive just for photos of a place, and then cross those results with "which week?" but I suppose an old-fashion list could be made; after all, it's only 52 entries.

 

[USAntigoon]

My big 2024 project is to digitize a lot of old b/w and color pictures..
Using a vertical stand and my Canon 100mm macro..
Will use the tethering feature of Capture One Pro via my MBP

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I have been very pleased with the new Z50 for copying negs and slides, especially negs. I have many rolls from various trips that are printed at 3x5 and one trip 2.5x3.5. Will be tackling as many as possible over the winter. A roll of 36 takes me 15-20 minutes to copy, as opposed to a minimum of 3 hours to scan. Either way there's another hour or even two post imaging, though with color negs the scanner can be a bit faster post image. Will be making ~8x11 prints of the best images and combining others into collages to make 8.5x11 presentation books.

Nankoweep Canyon from my river trip down the Grand Canyon. Kodacolor 100 film.

 

[splifingate]

P has passed, and M is not really 'here' anymore.

My Pop was an art professor, and--amongst a myriad of other media--was an avid photographer. Solely film.

I have two-handful-thousands of photos/slides that can/need/should be digitised.

Over the past ten years, I have been teaching my self html, css and php

About six years ago, something just 'clicked', and I got my head around the matter; I was able to create a php product that enables me to just plop digitals in any folder structure I could choose, and out-pops a rather-decent web-based photo gallery, on-the-fly.

It's been a few years since I actively worked the back-end, but '24 seems to be the year I may gnaw-the-bone, and move-forward to phase three: actually organising my digital assets.

Collating twenty years of personal assets seems to be the main challenge . . . with digital, the 3:2:1 Philosophy has inevitably morphed into a 7:3:6:2.7:1:5:47 mess 🤷‍♂️

Copies, of copies, of copies, of...what a mess!

Familial Assets are primary.

I also have (dumpsters are an amazing resource (in more ways than one)) two extensive albums of an Unknown Soldier's journey through the 1942(?) European Theatre to digitise.

I will prob avail myself of a Professional Digitising Service.

If I can get past all that, the rest should be gravy!

Asset Management is now Job #1

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Well have hit a snag in the print end of the copy process. Took the first batch of 8x11s to Walmart to print. All had a grey strip down two edges to flesh them out to 8x12. When they came back those grey strips were all over the map. Sometime in the past year Walmart has started doing auto-correct, which can make it impossible to get a print looking the way I want it to look. Will be talking to them next week to see if there is any way to be sure they can/will disable that feature bug.

Failing that I am examining two alternatives. One is the Epson 8550ET printer which still has software to match my old versions of OS-X. I don't for a second believe the 6000 prints per set of colored inks however if I can get 3-400 8x10s and perhaps 50 11x17s that should complete the project. After that I would abandon or sell the printer, as I would not be using it enough to make it worthwhile. Any feedback good, bad or indifferent on this printer???

The other is to use London Drugs which doubles the price per print and adds a $10/batch shipping charge, but if requested they print without corrections and I have been very happy with their work in the past.

The big issue with the printer is finding a place to put it, and experience with Epson printers would suggest it is better to print at least 20-30 prints/week, meaning I would need to wait till the prep work is nearly complete before starting the print runs. Otherwise most of the ink ends up being used to clean print heads. Could possibly run it in a semi remote location via ethernet, which might resolve the space issue. I know I could cable it directly to the old MacPro but hoping I can just plug into one of the unused network EN ports.

On the plus side I have completed the preliminary testing and am through over a dozen sets of negatives, representing two short trips and one 3 week long river trip. Very happy how the images are turning out. Cataloging and, print prep and slide presentations waiting for the fine tuning round later down the road, as I will do all three at once for each set of negs. So glad I did all of the processing and printing myself. The negs are in fantastic condition with maybe one in twenty images showing minor easily fixed scratches.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well have hit a snag in the print end of the copy process. Took the first batch of 8x11s to Walmart to print. All had a grey strip down two edges to flesh them out to 8x12. When they came back those grey strips were all over the map. Sometime in the past year Walmart has started doing auto-correct, which can make it impossible to get a print looking the way I want it to look. Will be talking to them next week to see if there is any way to be sure they can/will disable that feature bug.

Failing that I am examining two alternatives. One is the Epson 8550ET printer which still has software to match my old versions of OS-X. I don't for a second believe the 6000 prints per set of colored inks however if I can get 3-400 8x10s and perhaps 50 11x17s that should complete the project. After that I would abandon or sell the printer, as I would not be using it enough to make it worthwhile. Any feedback good, bad or indifferent on this printer???

The other is to use London Drugs which doubles the price per print and adds a $10/batch shipping charge, but if requested they print without corrections and I have been very happy with their work in the past.

The big issue with the printer is finding a place to put it, and experience with Epson printers would suggest it is better to print at least 20-30 prints/week, meaning I would need to wait till the prep work is nearly complete before starting the print runs. Otherwise most of the ink ends up being used to clean print heads. Could possibly run it in a semi remote location via ethernet, which might resolve the space issue. I know I could cable it directly to the old MacPro but hoping I can just plug into one of the unused network EN ports.

On the plus side I have completed the preliminary testing and am through over a dozen sets of negatives, representing two short trips and one 3 week long river trip. Very happy how the images are turning out. Cataloging and, print prep and slide presentations waiting for the fine tuning round later down the road, as I will do all three at once for each set of negs. So glad I did all of the processing and printing myself. The negs are in fantastic condition with maybe one in twenty images showing minor easily fixed scratches.

To reduce the need to clean print heads in between print runs leave it switched on in standby mode.
You save a lot of ink that way.