The August Break 2010 – A Review

I cannot believe an entire month has passed with me participating in Susannah Conway’s “The August Break” project! It’s one of those “it flew by so quickly” … and yet “I remember each and every day SO well” kind of contradiction thingies. To commemorate the experience, I thought I would wrap the month up with a bit of a summary. Woohoo!

The Good – SO many good things about this project!!! Primarily, it “encouraged” me to be disciplined about trying to take good quality photos on a daily basis, and yet gave me the freedom to just “fire one off” if I was having a bad/busy day. A month was just the right amount of time to commit to a “theme” too – long enough to make me have to “stretch”, but short enough that I didn’t get too frustrated or bored with it. And just look at the great stuff I created!!!

I’ve got to admit, it was a huge relief to not have to spend hours mulling over my blog posts – my brain definitely enjoyed the the end of summer more this way! Plus, a lot of exposure to other cool blogs over the month means I now have a better idea of what I want my own blog to be like. Yippie! I just have to figure out how to pick and choose between which ones I want to keep up with, as I now have dozens in my list that caught my eye this month.

I also “met” a lot of amazing people who were also involved with the project. We connected because we were commenting on each others photos every day, which was awesome! Ultimately this led to my “discovery” of what I really like in photos. Not that I didn’t know this before, but now I’m even more consciously aware of it when I’m composing an image. I also now have a list of techniques and tricks I’d like to try when I get the chance, thanks to the inspirational efforts of my peers. And as “enlightened” as I would like to be, the ego-stroking (via comments and homage photos) was a definite plus too. 😉

The Bad – Now, to be fair, it wasn’t all “sunshine and roses” (though there were several photos of these as well). The biggest downside by far was the time commitment – I still ended up spending waaay too much time computer-bound! First, there was the sorting through all the photos I had taken (on average, about 100 per day!), then the editing, then the blog posting, then the linking to FB, then the posting to Flickr…and THEN, the going through all of the other posted group photos…and commenting! As a result, I felt I didn’t have time to do other creative things when the mood struck – like painting or sewing…and I actually missed doing them, but felt I had committed to a month of photos, so… I don’t know how I’m going to wean myself from this routine, but I’m going to HAVE to if I want to get anything else done!

I also found it really challenging to do this project while minding the baby (who is at that “needs near constant supervision” phase). If I restricted myself to nap-time photo taking, the light was harsh and hard to work with, or alternately the weather was crappy. If I tried to work around nap-time, I was limited to quick “point-and-shoot” images taken on the fly so I could keep one eye on the wee trouble maker. And trying to take photos anywhere beyond our baby-proofed house? Well, you can imagine the chaos that ensued. Plus, I knew it would be lame to shoot a whole month of family photos, so after about a week, the confines of my house and yard were feeling a bit claustrophobic. Yes, it’s been a challenging month, to say the least, and I am really looking forward to more time-flexible projects.

The Ugly – There really is no nice way to say this, and I don’t want to come across as mean or anything, but… one has to admit there were a lot of bad photos taken this month – many of my own included. The reason I can now clearly define my own tastes better is because I looked at hundreds of photos that made me ask “Why?” Yes, I know this wasn’t a photo competition, and yes, I understand that there were a lot of novice photographers involved…but still – even the mundane can be beautiful, people! Of course, the flipside of this is that I now try to find the “So what?” (something my favourite photography teacher was fond of asking) in my own work. Universal appeal. Timelessness. Meaning. Of course, there were many amazingly wonderful photos as well, so it was totally worth the wading through.

At one point I came across a photographer who firmly believed that taking an image directly from a camera was a “photograph”, but the minute you altered it in ANY way, it became a “digital artwork”. Hmm. This started me thinking about all of the techniques and processing being used nowadays with digital photography – a lot of it without purpose, in my opinion. I also came to believe that even the choice of camera/film used is actually akin to a treatment that you apply to an image – it absolutely needs to support or enhance that image somehow. And so, even though I enjoy a lot of Susannah’s Polaroid images, I saw enough less-than-inspiring Polaroids this summer to prevent me from pulling my own out and giving it a spin. At least not for public consumption.

The Verdict – So. Am I glad I participated? Heck, yeah! As I said, I learned a great deal this month and am totally inspired to “step up” my photographic efforts when the opportunity arises. Was it what I expected? Nope, not at all. There were way more participants and a lot more interaction than I had anticipated, so it wasn’t terribly relaxing – but that’s totally my doing. Will I continue with the group into September (“August Break Continued”, as has been suggested)? Um, no, I don’t think so. Next month will already be stupid busy with school and travel and solo parenting and getting back to some of my other creative loves (I hope)…so I’m going to have to say goodbye for now.

Bottom line – would I recommend it or do again? YES-YES-a-million-times-YES! And I will do it again next summer, for sure! Not that I’m going to totally abandon the group and the connections I’ve made until then, but I definitely won’t be checking in or posting daily. And who knows, maybe by next summer I’ll be ready to take it one step further (like some of this years participants did) and dedicate my photos to a month of “Strangers” or “Diptychs” or “Post Production Techniques” or some other funky theme.

Finally, I would like to say a HUGE thank you again to each and every one of you that took the time to comment on my work, whether here or on Flickr! I really and truly appreciate it, and am very excited to see where we all end up going to from this! Happy snapping, peeps! 🙂