Since I got my new camera, I’ve managed to up the number of photos I take each day quite significantly. Keeping them all in order can be quite an issue!

I use Picasa for organising my photos – it makes it easy to grab things as I want them, and the face tagging makes it easy to find a photo of that particular person you wanted. It’s also quite easy to send photos or upload them from there if I want to share a batch.

But I have come across a cool feature of Windows Explorer that has helped me out with my #project365 (a photo a day). I have included the directory I keep all my photos in into the Pictures Library. I then have a folder for each month – e.g. “2010 – Dec” or “2o11 – Jan”. If you go in to these folders, you can then set up preferences to easily get to your daily photos. If you select “Arrange by: Day” either in the top right of the window, or in the right-click menu (you can also order as you wish from the right click menu), you get an expandable/collapsable list of the days photos were taken from this folder. It is then easy to pick out a photo of the day!

Stay tuned for more photography top tips.

So here we are, the end of Project 365 for 2010 – a photo a day for a whole year!

I’ve had a lot of fun, and come across a lot of things I normally wouldn’t have if I had just been moseying around the surface of this planet moving from thing to thing. I would like to think that I appreciate what is around me more, and have become better at spotting photo opportunities. While the hardware I was using hasn’t always been great, I would like to think that I’ve learnt some things photographically this year too.

But let us not stop the fun here. I’ve invested in a new camera (EOS 1000D) to aid me with my continuing photographic escapades, as I embark on another year of a photo a day. I hope the next year will allow me to learn and appreciate even more about photography, and produce higher quality photos over this year just finished. My aim is to come out with 365 photos I am proud of.

The journey of 2010 has been well documented, for me at least. While my photos would mean little to nothing for most people, I have found it a fantastic way to remind me of what I’ve been doing throughout the year. I think that is part of the beauty of even simple photography, that it has that power.

So as we embark on 2011 (which I am greatly looking forward to), I invite everybody and anybody with camera equipment to join me on Project 365. Whether your instrument of choice is a brand-new Canon 7D, a point and shoot or your mobile, the memories and rewards from such a process are many and bountiful. If you do decide to join in, send me a tweet and tag your pictures with #project365 and I’ll take a look!

31/12/10

The new camera has a substantially higher number of buttons, settings and general bits and pieces than my previous few cameras – so I have been experimenting with what works best for me. The whole point of a fancy new camera was to get more control, so here are the settings I have configured so far. Anyone got recommendations? (The camera is an EOS 1000D)

On Friday I posted some photos of the University of Reading’s London Road campus, which I had entered in a competition (still time to vote! Search for Chris A or University of Reading – the competition site is terrible).

They were the nice, shiny, red brick side of the London Road campus.

As I went off in search of more unique and slightly more abstract photos, I came across what seemed to be another world shielded by the manicured bushes and neat paths.

A few weeks ago, the Microsoft Student Rally was brought to my attention – a photography competition for students to capture photos of their favourite places at their University.

The idea is to take some stills of the best bits of your campus, put them online for everyone to see, and win some pretty awesome prizes at the same time.

For other competitions like this, you can become a fan of Microsoft Student on Facebook.

Check out my photos below. You can also vote for my entry if you like them! (Just search for Chris A or University of Reading – the competition site is terrible!!)

I took a contrasting set, showing the other side of the University, which I will also publish in the next few days.