one more selfie
I started this 365 project in hopes of rekindling my passion for photography. A long time ago when I was first learning photography, I started my first 365, but before I completed it, I began a photography class at the community college, and I decided I would not have time for both. Since then I have wondered if I would have learned more continuing the 365 instead of doing the community college class. Creating an image each day and posting it on flickr… a person can learn so much.
So in the beginning of this year, I decided to try another 365. I decided on selfies because it is hard for me to find willing subjects especially if it is every day. In the back of my head, I also thought it would be good to learn some photoshop. So I started my "365 selfies" project. It didn’t take long to realize I was not going to get re-fired up about photography, but I did get very excited about photoshop and illustrator and painter and digital art. I apologize for abandoning my selfie goal and turning this into a "365 image" project. From the beginning I thought that if I could learn something or get a little better each day, I would call it a success. I’ve learned tons.
People ask me if I will do another 365. If I had not been "forcing" myself to do an image each day, many of the images I’ve posted (including some of my favorites and also ones that ended up on explore) would never have been created and/or pushed up to flickr. Some days (most days) I didn’t know what I was going to do, or while I was working on it, I didn’t feel it was going anywhere, but I kept struggling with it because I needed something to push up to flickr. But there are things I see now that I want to work on, and they are not images that I can get done in one day… I have a stack of books that I want to devour (Painter Wow, Carlyn Beccia’s "The Digital Renaissance" and "Digital Painting for the Complete Beginner"). I joined PencilKings, and there are courses on photoshop and character design I want to get through. I am wondering if I should take drawing lessons. There are illustrations with wonderful backlighting that I want to see if I can re-create. In my rush to create images for this project, I rarely can tell you how I did it, and I would like to compile some "how-i-did-its" if only for myself to refer back to… I feel like a kid in a candy store looking at all the possible things I can do in 2016.
Thank you to all my flickr friends for coming to have a look throughout the year. Thank you for your favs and encouragement. I hope you can see that this project has become a very special part of my life and you all have played a part in it.
Gail Gong
2015 December 31
#selfies #day
