Winter Projects Conclusions

Over the last three months beginning with the winter solstice and ending with the spring equinox, I’ve been doing a pseudo-project. That project was to photograph sunrise in the Grand Marais downtown area as much as I could.

While I didn’t always end up photographing there. On some mornings, I just didn’t feel like I could go downtown for (another) sunrise in Grand Marais, and on the mornings that I was teaching workshops, I’d use other locations. But I went as often as I could even on mornings where conditions were so bad that I didn’t bother setting up my camera.

In the end, I made 23 three star or above images from the project.

To pull together the project images, I used Adobe Lightroom Classic (check out my online Lightroom class). Because I rate my images using Lightroom’s star system, I was able to find the images that I starred quickly by creating a Smart Collection. To create the collection, I used the following criteria:

• Match all the following rules:

  • Capture Date is after 2022-12-20

  • Capture Date is before 2023-03-21

  • Rating is greater than or equal to three stars

That found 70 total three star and above images from that time period from a total of 1,958 images that I didn’t delete. I’m not sure how many I deleted — probably 10 times that many.

Lightroom doesn’t offer a way to match by time, so to find the sunrise shots I sorted through the 70 images and added all those from Grand Marais at sunrise to another collection. That got me to 23 images three star and above images.

Then I counted the number of days, and I ended up with 15 different days. I tried to shoot almost every morning, but that didn’t work and many mornings didn’t offer conditions that made for good images. Plus I did go to other locations when I just couldn’t handle doing the same spot. So, I’m happy with the number of images and the number of days that I was able to make good images over the winter season.

I found that this was an interesting winter project. It challenged me to try and find new and unique ways to shoot a subject that I’ve been shooting for nearly two decades. And by locking myself into this project, I did explore a few new places like the following beach at sunrise instead of sunset.

This next one is also an example of something that I hadn’t shot before for sunrise.

I also shot a few old favorite compositions but was able to better time my shots. For example in the next image, I timed my shot better than in the past so that I could get the sun rising over the western breakwater.

And the following shot was of a subject that I had previously used. Because I knew the pilings, I was able to take advantage of the linear cloud structure to echo the lines on the ground and in the sky. Once I saw the clouds, I knew what I needed to photograph.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with projects over the last couple of years and have found them a rewarding way to focus my photography and motivate me to get out shooting more often. In the past, I often relied on travel to new locations to motivate me. These local projects that I’ve been doing have helped me come to appreciate the landscape near my home even more than I already did.

Of course, I have beauty out my front door, but I suspect that this could be done anywhere. If I could pull off a project shooting bugs in my front yard like I did in 2020, I think there are projects to be found wherever you live.

I have another project in mind for this summer, but I haven’t completely formed it in my mind yet. I’ve been toying with a water-based project idea that would help get me outside into the field as much as I used to get outside when I was younger. I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, it’s harder for me to find all the energy I had in the past to get outside and move. These projects are helping.

After I finalize my project idea, I’ll let you know about it and perhaps you could join me in doing a similar project near your home. Let me know what you think about that idea.

Until next time

That’s it for this issue. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on my winter project. I’m curious about any projects that you’ve been doing and if it has motivated you. Let me know.

I’m signing off and I’ll see you again in two weeks.