Milestones

I've hit two milestones this week. The first, as some may have noticed, is that I've hit triple digits in my project 365 attempt. In fact, today is day 101. The second is that I shot my 6000th exposure on the Canon EOS500D, which is not bad going considering I've only had it 5 months.

For my 100th and 101st pictures in 365/2011 I wanted something artistic, and something stark (to go with the theme of room 101). For picture 100 I actually revisited a subject I already photographed once before; blossoms on the trees. This time I wanted to make something high key, close up and fully making use of background blur and washed out colours. I think I succeeded.

100/365, originally uploaded by craigand.

For 101 I took a picture of some metal stairs running up the side of a hospital building. By making it black and white, and aligning it so the sharp diagonals zig-zagged down the image, I think I got what I was after. I toyed with the idea of boosting the contrast to make it look more film noir, but in the end I decided it just looked cheesy.

101/365, originally uploaded by craigand.

As for my other milestone this week, my 6000th exposure, I'm not sure I could possibly call the subject artistic. See what you think.

IMG_6000, originally uploaded by craigand.

Yup, it's the condiments tray at Tokyou. Stunning, no? But what have I done with the last few months? Have I improved? I think so. Have a look at the funky widget thing I found at roytanck.com over in the sidebar, and see what you think. And if that doesn't float your boat, just click through to the actual 365/2011 set on Flickr.