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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alan" data-source="post: 795027" data-attributes="member: 12333">This year I decided to challenge myself creatively and my first challenge came from a local group of photographers. They decided to try a local Solo Foto Book Month project following the basic idea of the original SoFoBoMo. Each participant completes a PDF photo book containing at least 35 original images and as much (or as little) text as desired, all within a 31-day period of their choice within 2013. I took up the challenge in January and chose a railroad theme. Within the 31 days allotted I traveled all around the area and took over 300 photos which I managed to whittle down to the final 55 shots for the book. It has now been published here <a href="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8268488/LIPG/Wells-Trains.pdf" target="_blank">https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8268488/LIPG/Wells-Trains.pdf</a> Now that that is completed, I have moved on to a new project, although this one will most likely be something I work on for most of the year. I am going to create another e-book, for my own use, this one containing bird photos. This all started when I read a local article in January about migrating birds moving through the area. I figured I could start looking for some of them myself. As sometimes happens one thing lead to another and here I am now getting photos of any bird I see. Like most of us, I know the basic birds, Robins, Blue Jays, Mallards etc. Since I'm not a birder, I have to do a lot of research to figure out what bird image I just captured. Who knew there were over a dozen types of sea gulls? Better yet, who knew some of them had different color patterns every year for the first four years of their life? OK I am sure there are a lot of people who know that but I don’t. So I spend a lot of time trying to ID them by looking at pictures on-line. The good news is I have learned a lot of great bird trivia.  I have taken over 1000 bird photos over the last few weeks, however not all of them useable. After getting poor images of some birds I shot, I started to learn more about how certain birds act and react to the world around them. I am beginning to be able to anticipate what they might do and adjust according. I have also learned more about ways to set exposure under different conditions and have seen better results from outing to outing. So what does all this really mean? A smart man once told me if I learn just one thing a day I will know 365 new things by the end of the year. Well I might not learn one thing a day doing this ( I don’t work on it every day ) but I know more now about trains, birds, exposure and composition than I did last year. So now the question is what are you doing to challenge your creativity?  There are a lot of things out there that you can do, including the monthly challenge right here. About that, I had not taken food pictures since 19**, when I was in school. My first thought was I will skip this month’s assignment, but then that “I will challenge myself this year”  kicked in. So I set to getting a couple photos done for it. If I win or lose is not the point here, that I challenged myself to use it to improve what I love to do is. Have you challenged yourself this year? Have you learned something new today? I know I have and that, after all, was the real goal.</blockquote>

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