Bottle

Well, I made it . . . in a fashion. I certainly didn't manage to upload all my blips day-by-day, but after some totally hardcore back-blipping sessions I now have seven hundred and thirty consecutive blips. Cor blimey!

The past year has seen my photography slowly but surely move away from black and white because I feel I have finally started to get my head around how to take a color photograph. All it took was for sometime to tell me that just like with black and white photography, color photography is still about brightness, but you have to deal with color brightness instead. And with that piece of advice I started producing color photographs that were closer to the idea that I had in my head of what I wanted to create. Who knows what I'll do in the next year with this new-fangled thing you call color photography!

Admittedly, though, the past year's photographs haven't come as easily as they did two years ago, but I suppose that is to be expected when you do something like this every day. There have also been changes in my life as ShinyDay and I moved a little further outside of Tokyo. This has meant that I'm unable to spend as much time on Tokyo's streets taking people pictures, and. without the daily practice I've definitely lost a yard of pace. I now find myself either not even drawing the camera up to my eye, or getting there just a little too late to catch the moment. I'd like to think I'm subconsciously being more selective, but I highly doubt it's that. The result of this and a few other camera-related incidences have caused my confidence in taking street photos to a low. I hope the next year sees a bit of return to form on this front.

The positive side of moving outside of Tokyo though has been the photographs I've taken near my apartment in and around all the builder's yards and scrap merchants. The mix of shadows and highlights, decaying textures, and interesting finds have kept me a happy little snapper, and will hopefully keep me stocked up with blips for a while to come yet.

Tomorrow starts another year of photography and another year of blipping. Another year of experiencing and understanding a foreign city through a viewfinder. Another year of learning. Care to join me to see we end up?

PS: I will return tomorrow with more of the book reviews. Thought I'd take a Blip birthday holiday.