Looking ahead

So here we are at 365. What an eye-opener (literally and figuratively) a year of blipping has been. A lot of what Arachne says on her 365 blip resonates with me. Looking back, what surprises me is how much blipping has changed my daily life.

1. I very rarely took photos before I started blipping. Now I take a camera with me literally everywhere. When I started, I thought I could just put the compact point-and-shoot in my handbag. But that didn't work, because I didn't like using it, and I didn't like the results. Within days I'd dusted off my neglected SLR. It wouldn't fit in my handbag, so I had to buy a new camera bag. This was just the start of blip expenses :)

2. I work at home, so my days could easily be spent just sitting at the computer, then spending an evening at home, without having stepped outside the door. Blipping forced me to go out every day, if only for ten minutes, hunting for something to photograph.

3. As so many others have said, a daily photograph forces you to really look at familiar surroundings. We've been living in the same village for nearly 15 years, and I can't believe how much stuff I've seen this year that I'd either never noticed, or just not found interesting before.

4. By September, I was so hooked that I went on a week-long photography course and enjoyed every minute. I wouldn't have dreamed of doing this at the beginning of the year! And by the end of October, I'd bought a new camera.

5. I started out just posting photos for my own satisfaction. I hadn't registered the social side of blipfoto at all. I was astonished when people started commenting on my photos. That in turn led to my subscribing to their journals, following links from them, and discovering that blipland is home to a host of incredibly talented and inspiring people. It wasn't long before I attended my first blipmeet, and I've been to two more since then. It's lovely meeting people that you only know online -- they have always lived up to my expectations.

6. In 2011, I read 53 books. In 2012, I only read 34. I think blipping has a lot to do with that! I started out trying to limit my subscriptions, but the number crept inexorably upwards, and with it the time I spend looking at photos and commenting; time I would otherwise have spent with my nose in a book. Or blogging; my blog has become sadly neglected.

Now I've reached my goal, I'm intending to do what many blippers do -- cut down my commitment. I can't imagine not taking a camera everywhere -- like Arachne, I feel naked without one now -- but I won't feel obliged to take photos every day, or post blips of despair just to make my quota. I'll carry on trying to improve my photography -- I sense that another photography course will feature in 2013. I won't stop following other people's journals, and I will continue to appreciate silently :) I'll comment only when I feel I have something worth saying. And I'll seize every opportunity for a blipmeet!

Thanks to the leap year, I haven't yet completed a calendar year. I did consider using Graham Colling's trick, but in the end decided to roll with Blipfoto's system because I didn't want to leave a gap, even temporarily. Also, it gives me an excuse to continue my reflections on blipping tomorrow :)

If you're still reading ... for today's blip I went out to Sa Riera. It was really windy today, almost blowing me over. When I got out of the car, I did what I very rarely do since I went on the photography course: screwed the UV filter onto the lens for fear of it getting sandblasted (and when I saw the salt spatters on it later, I was glad I had). I had thought of writing 365 in the sand. But the dry sand was blowing everywhere, so it wouldn't hold a shape, and the wet sand was wet because it had big breakers crashing onto it. Besides, apart from my 100th blip I've avoided contrived shots for blipversaries. In the end I chose one of the minimalist geometric compositions I have come to like. Because another way blipping has changed my life is that it's transformed the way I see, and the photographs I choose to take.