One shot one kill... things I've learned

There have been 7 interesting days, I'll tell you that (there were 7 shots taken). And I did learn a lot from the project... about things I can do and, most importantly, things I can't do. So... here they are.

1. I can shoot everyday. It wasn't as hard as I had previously imagined... grabbing the camera, making sure I had the card inside, preparing the set, thinking about the light... everything seemed so natural.
2. Finding something to shoot is hard. The hardest part of the project was finding something worth shooting. I really wanted to get something out of this project... I mean... more than experience. I would try to find ideas all day... think about things I had always wanted to shoot and then discard the ideas because of the limited amount of time I had, the limited number of shots I had... you know... mostly because I wanted to play this safe. And I did... most of the time. The most risky shot I took was on day six of the project, when I went outside, calculated my exposure, went to the middle of the road, focused and shot. The image is pretty much out of focus, as you can see, and the framing didn't turn out so well either. I was able to somewhat fix that in the post-processing.
3. I'm not a one-shot kind of guy. Which is good. The purpose of the project was not to make me a guy who only takes one shot in one location. It was to help me improve my skills and to help me start shooting something. God knows I needed that. I really enjoy having the possibility of taking another photograph of the subject, of changing the perspective or the composition and being able to make my choice later, in the post-processing phase. I feel I learn more about the subject as I keep photographing it. Of course it's more efficient to take one shot and just use that one, but, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't yield the best results.
4. I should focus less on the technical side of things. Whenever I try to come up with an idea, I start from a technique or a certain lens I want to use, from technical elements such as bokeh or shallow dof, which is not entirely bad, but when creating a photograph (I'm not really sure I can even use that word when talking about my work, but hey!... thank God there's no Blogger Police), I think I should start from the main idea or the feeling I want it to convey or hey!... even from the subject and then work my way down to equipment and types of light I want to use and the rest of the stuff.
5. DON'T BE AFRAID!!!!! Whenever photographing something or experimenting or taking a photowalk, your courage will always be rewarded. The courage to whip out you camera, even though it might make people uncomfortable or it might get wet or broken, the courage to keep shooting, although you're not really sure about how it will turn out. But, most important, the courage to say... 'Hey! I'm shooting something today'.

Yeah... that's pretty much what I've learned from the project... hope it sticks with me long enough...

More shots to come...

R