Side Project - The View Across Town

Some of you might have already found "The View Across Town" since it's been hanging out in my blogroll for a few days now.

Back in December, Betsy said "I have an idea for us. A new blog project."

I said, "Okay." I'm pretty much up for anything.

She had seen a blog called 3191: A Year of Mornings, done by two friends who live across the country from each other. Each day, each friend posted an image. It's interesting to look at the blog, some days the images are eerily similar, even though they're posted from far-flung friends. It's also a similar concept to Jaime's blog, 366 images, except Jaime's doing that all on her own.

Betsy and I just live across town from each other, and she's interested in working on honing her photography skills and getting more creative with photos. I also am looking forward to this project because it will force me to shoot photos every day. It will be tough, since I spend my working hours with students whose faces I'm not allowed to post to God and everybody on the innernets. (Silly privacy laws...) But, it has been fun so far.

Sometimes, the photos come from events (like Adam and Jayne's birthday dinner), or shopping trips with friends, but I'm guessing most of my photos will be from the daily minutia. Like the thing that jump starts me each morning, or things around the homestead.

This will be a good exercise for me. Even when I was making my living as a photographer, my strength wasn't in making quiet little photos. I have always been much more able to capture moments of people DOING things. This project will be something different. I can already tell it will be frustrating on some days. All of my photos will be taken with my Canon Digital Elph, or my iPhone. Sometimes I see something that would make a great photo, if only I had a telephoto lens, or the ability to keep the shutter open for much longer than either of those cameras will allow.

But, I must live as I teach. That camera is just a box that lets light in. Don't get all worked up because you're not carrying the same equipment as the guy next to you. (We have to repeat this over and over at summer photo workshops when kids say "But how can I ever make good photos with THIS?)

I hope that you'll add The View Across Town to your blog roll, and check us out each day. As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged. We like to know that someone out there somewhere is interested in all this stuff we put on the web.

Thanks to Betsy for wanting to do this, and to Jaime for being my inspiration for the project.