As you may have noticed things have been a bit quiet here on braingunk for the last few weeks, that's because yours truly has been taking a bit of a break and working on a new project.

One a day for thirty days, doesn’t sound too tricky does it?  And it didn't to me either when I set myself the challenge to learn to become a competent photographer in just one month.

I've never owned a real camera before, sure I had a Polaroid when I was a kid and sure I've had the odd compact digital jobbie for no particular reason and without particular motivation, but I've never owned what I'd call a 'serious camera'. That was until an old friend decided to upgrade to a new camera and sell his old one to me...

I'm pretty much always on a shoestring budget so despite the camera being at the lower end of the serious camera spectrum it was still not an inconsiderable outlay from my point of view.  I'm sure in the serious world of photography it would be considered a minor outlay at most, but to me it required a bit of a commitment to justify it.

I've embarked on many dalliances with the creative arts throughout my life, but to be honest I've never found one that I thought was really my true calling.  Sure I used to be able to strum out a few tunes on a guitar, sure I've been know to throw some paint on a canvas and call it a painting, I've even been know to do a bit of writing too (I hope you've noticed at least that one),  but I have so far never found my creative focus (the jury is still out on the writing).

So once I'd purchased the camera you can imagine how eager I was to find out if I was going to be any good at it.

The one thing I didn't count on was how technical photography can be.  There are a million and one little things to take into account every time you hold the viewfinder up to your eye.  I wont bore you with details, but suffice to say there's a lot to remember. 
It took me a few days to learn the basic functions that the camera provides and mostly without any understanding of what was actually happening.  Two good friends, Iain and Andy (photographers both) provided unimaginably helpful tutoring during the early phase of the project for which I am unendingly grateful.  The technical side of photography was an area where I did not want to go to be honest, I found it (and still do to some extent) quite tedious and it often feels like a barrier to actually taking photos rather than a set of tools to help you take photos.  I wanted photography to be about seeing and capturing pictures, not running through checklists and understanding theoretical implications of optics. Sadly however there is an unavoidable element of this if you want to create good looking images in anything but the most perfect lighting and environmental conditions.  If you're thinking of shooting photos at night and indoors there are a plethora of considerations… and as it turned out that's exactly what I wanted to do. Low light photography and especially low light portraiture can be very tricky.  But I decided to dive into the deep end and give it a shot (no pun intended).

As I mentioned at the beginning I wanted to learn fast so setting myself a short term project that would push me to learn as much as possible seemed like a good idea.  I'd decided to take photos of people as I personally find such photos far more interesting than other scenes.  If a picture really is worth a thousand words, you can bet your panty hose that picture will have a person in it.  I did a little reading and listened to the advice of all my photographer friends who pretty much all insisted that I was heading into one of the most difficult areas of photography.  Unperturbed (and probably still just a little bit naïve) I insisted that this was the area I wanted to explore and so I began. 
I set myself the following task:

"Take at least one half decent portrait photograph every day for thirty consecutive days."

Now I know 'half decent' is very much open to personal interpretation, but to me it mean one that I personally didn't cringe at. One that I would be perfectly happy to show to the subject of that photo.

The challenge is now over and I've learned a shed load, (far more than I wanted to), and I'm still carrying my camera wherever I go, so I guess it was a success from my point of view at least. 

Whether you agree or not is of course completely up to you. If you want to make your mind up I will be holding an exhibition to display the resulting photographs soon.  You may have seen some of them already if you follow me on twitter of facebook or have perused the galleries at htttp://esp-photos.com/  but you wont have seen them in their full sized, lusciously printed, hi-res, gorgeousness format. I'll be inviting all of those seen in the photographs and hopefully they're not so sick of me sticking a camera in their faces that they will turn up, so you can meet the people behind the images who are all fabulous folk.

I'll announce the details of the exhibition as soon as they're thrashed out.

There’s a link to my all new photography web site above on the top bar.  Have a gander and let me know what you think… or better still how much you want to hire me ;)