My Favourite Photos from the 365

I am slowly adjusting to  live post-365. It is actually more of an adjustment than I expected. Out of the three days since the project ended, I have only let one slip by without taking a photo. That felt a bit weird but also good because I was tired and couldn't have taken a good photo anyway. I don't miss those nights. I took quite a few today but I will wait a bit to edit them. There is no pressure any more - which is a good and a bad thing. 

I now have to decide how to move forward. I know that I still want to continue growing but I'm not sure how yet. 

As a first step I wanted to review all of the photos from the 365 and pick out my favourites. This has not been easy. There are a total of 3403 photos in this blog! Early on I thought that I might get the finished project printed up as a book. I see now that this was a totally unrealistic idea. There is probably not a book in existence with that many colour photographs in it. It would cost a fortune. Picking out favourites was tough so in the end I didn't give it much thought. I just scrolled down and picked out the ones that I had an emotional reaction to. I left out the doll and toys photos because it feels like they are a seperate side of my photography journey. That would need a whole separate blog post.

Here is what I chose. 

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So what can I conclude from this selection? 

1. I think that it is fair to say that I mostly like portraits of my family members. I aim to capture them being themselves, their individual expressions and with the things that matter to them. I love to capture moments between them that reflect their relationships between each other. I want to photograph them doing activities that reflect the stage of life they are in, because I am aware that their interests change so quickly. 
2. I love images that show the energy in my family. Their are a lot of jumping and running shots. I don't know how my poor bed has survived this year! I want celebrate the fact that my kids are healthy and active. Family life is often chaotic in our house, but good. High shutter speed is essential a lot of the time. 
3. I would love my pictures to tell a story. I think that some of my pictures achieve this, but I need to work on this more. 
4. Generally I like my colour photos to be bright and positive in feeling and my black and white to be darker in mood. This is not always the case though. 
5. I love water shots.
6. I love playing with lights and slow shutter speed or shaped bokeh.
7. I love high contrast black and white much more than I thought I would. 
8. I find the Lensbaby fun to play with.
9. I enjoy capturing city life, particular at night.

I think that I am a long way off developing any sort of individual style and that is OK by me. I guess that a first step is identifying what it is that I like to photograph most. I feel that first tentative step has now been taken.