Hello everyone,

for the many hundreds of new members and thousands of regular visitors to our home here for m4/3rds, you may not be too aware of an exciting project we've been running over the last 4 months... it's called the PAD (Photo A Day) Project, and it's probably the most powerful way for us to help each other to seriously improve our photography, regardless of experience or ability level, location or time zone!

I'll leave it for the PAD members who've contributed to the project over the last few weeks to add their thoughts and encouragement below, and answer your questions... but it's basically a way to develop some great habits which will serve you a lifetime - and develop a boatload of confidence in yourself as a photographer

You can join the PAD team in two clicks! just click on the 'Blogs' tab top right, and then 'Post to your Blog' in the Options panel on the left.

Enter "Day 1... Photo title" as the title of your post, a brief intro to your image and click on the 'Insert Image' picture icon in the editor toolbar.

Here's where it gets a bit more involved - you'll either post the address of your image, hosted off-site (e.g. Smugmug, Flickr, Zenfolio etc) or from a User Album you can create for free here on mu-43.com (click on the Gallery tab top right, My Albums top left, Create a New Album for your PAD gallery)...

Finally, end with "C&C Welcome and appreciated" under your entry and you'll instantly make many friends who are doing the PAD project themselves!

Here's my PAD as an example, you can see the format, and how the group offer encouragement, feedback and support from day 1.

For a bit more background to the project, have a look at my last post here.

I hope you'll take this opportunity to get more involved with our community, and share more with us of your world through your PAD.

Cheers

Brian

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Founder, Olympus Photo Safari Group
http://www.ukphotosafari.org

hmmm ... I use my camera most days so I'm tempted to try and force myself.

What iId like to do is backtrack a few days (since the 19th in fact) to "catch up" with some images, but I'm not sure that's within the spirit of the enterprise ... what do people think ?

Hi pdh, we're very relaxed about the rules... but posting one image per day will give the rest of us in the PAD group a chance to review each image and comment while keeping the workload manageable.

I hope you will join us - and can certainly guarantee you'll get out more than you put in!

Cheers

Brian

__________________
Founder, Olympus Photo Safari Group
http://www.ukphotosafari.org

I won't make a habit of it ... just a catch up to start with ...
I seem to remember a post somewhere that describes a "quick start" to getting a PAD blog going but can't for the life of me find it ... or did I just imagine it ?

Not a problem - the PAD will stretch you for sure... my aim was always to make 90 days, we have review milestones at 30 and 60 days to share what you're getting out of the exercise.

Cheers

Brian

__________________
Founder, Olympus Photo Safari Group
http://www.ukphotosafari.org

oh well here's to my public exposure & humiliation then ... Micro Four Thirds User Forum - he does what he can

Hi all and thank you Brian for creating this topic. The PAD project owes very much to you.

When I registered on this forum, I received a warm welcome from many cheerful persons, whom I thank too, but you directed me to this PAD project of yours, and while quite unsure I would be able to follow for a sustained period of time, I now find myself turning the 100 mark.

This has been a great adventure. To be truthful, when the novelty worn off around day 10 ~ 20, I had a moment when I considered quitting. It was still winter, I was burning the midnight oil at work, and wouldn't be out before the night. Very difficult to indulge in street photography, and for days I couldn't picture anything out of my own apartment. But even my less than stellar images where reviewed, and I received great support that helped me sail through.

Looking back, even those moments were positive, as I had to practice some kind of imaging I don't usually do, like close-up in artificial light.

As days came and went by, I tried and experimented with more techniques than I did in years before. Picture taking, sure, but also post-processing, and I learnt a lot of things simply by looking at others work, and sometimes asking for specific process they were using, to duplicate later. I therefore built an invaluable toolbox of techniques I'm sure will come handy someday.

I also learnt to use my new camera inside out, which is very important. If you're not at ease with your tool, you can't expect taking great pictures, because you'll miss the "decisive moment" while you fiddle around to find that seldom used function you know exists, but can't remember where.

But ultimately, what was the most important was to blend in a cheerful community, very supportive, and who wouldn't take offence if you had to skip a day or two. While making a picture per day is the goal, it's not a rule that would got you expelled for a minor breach here and there.

The only thing I can add at this point is : you must try to believe !

Thanks for posting this Brian here are some excerpts that I though are appropriate from my 90 day review.

April through June/July is always good for flower and garden photography and I have been having alot of fun shooting macros in my garden as well as other types of photos. I have found that this time of year (in the northern hemisphere) it can be fairly easy to shoot something everyday as long as you don't expect to shoot a masterpiece everyday. I try to shoot something everyday but if I don't particularly like anything from that day I may resort to one from a few days back that I prefer.

I have found it is best to post photos on the morning of the following day as that gives me more time to process them without feeling rushed and the images get more time in the Today list in the Blog/PAD section. We could use some new Padders but regardless I am having fun doing this and I know I would not have shot many of these photos without the regularity of the PAD. I post my photos to my blog here through Flickr as I found that to be the simplest method I also post many of my PAD photos to another blog through flickr so I can multitask easily.

I think the M 4/3 system is really good for a project like this as the cameras are small and easy to almost always have one (or more) with you.

What counts most is the body of work as something you can look back on re-live your photography and that time in your life and look back on how you are changing and developing as a photographer. Sometimes the photos should be trivial, simple storytelling, others can be more artistic but like life, everyday should be a little different.

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some of my photos here:
http://500px.com/lisaosta
http://www.flickr.com/photos/losta
http://gplus.to/LisaOsta

Just from the top of my head. This site can display various awards for meritorious contributors; as entering a PAD project is more free and personal, I don't think a medal would be adequate, but maybe we should have a kind of 'ribbon' (like this one, purely for example purposes : http://www.nhlink.net/ClevelandNeigh...hop/ribbon.jpg). One might apply for a blank one, and then there would be 3 more versions, at 30, 60 and ninety days, the last one being 'sticky' as an achievement for those having made it. Or simply, 2 versions, one for people entering the project, and one for when they. wish to leave, estimating they accomplished their goal.

This would certainly raise awareness about the whole project for newcomers, even if some people dropped out, their profiles would be linked in some ways to the community of the PAD.

Is it possible, and would it be interesting ?

I think that's a fantastic suggestion Mauve... we'll discuss this in the backroom if necessary, but I hope we can implement something similar.

Cheers

Brian

__________________
Founder, Olympus Photo Safari Group
http://www.ukphotosafari.org