6000 Pictures

Back in December 2004, Tony Blair was British Prime Minister, George W Bush was US President, I was working at The Open University - and I had just bought my first digital camera, a 4 megapixel Fuji FinePix A340. 

Since then the UK has had four new Prime Ministers and US three new Presidents - I've worked at two further universities and I've taken pictures with about a dozen different digital cameras and at least half-a-dozen phones.

So? 

On 24th December 2004 I took a few pictures with my relatively new Fuji camera, including this one... which we'll call Picture of the Day #1

Picture of the Day #1. 24th December 2004. Open University, Milton Keynes.

And since then I've taken at least one photograph every day.  Some of these pictures have been quite good, some have been distinctly mediocre and others have just documented the daily routine.  

The pictures have been my diary and remind me where I was, what I was doing and (in some cases) what my mood was.

These eight pictures were picked at random from the PoD collection (and sorted chronologically!).

PoD#119. 21st April 2005. Thornborough Bridge, Buckingham.

PoD#472. 9th April 2006. Headington, Oxford.

PoD#895. 6th June 2007. Fair Isle, Shetland Islands.

PoD#4114. 29th March 2016. University of Warwick.

PoD#4961. 24th July 2018. Oxford Brookes University.

PoD#5006. 7th September 2018. Coffee Time.

PoD#5246. 5th May 2019. C S Lewis Nature Reserve, Oxford.

PoD#5562. 16th March 2020. Final Commute. Bury Knowle Park, Oxford.

If I was going to pick out eight of my favourite pictures from over the years the selection might be something like this

PoD#625. 9th September 2006. Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

PoD#1381. 4th October 2008. Tigers Nest, Bhutan.

PoD#2016. 1st July 2010. Svalbard.

PoD#2545. 12th December 2011. South Georgia Island.

PoD#3523. 16th August 2014. Eilean Donan Castle.

PoD#4735. 10th December 2017. Headington, Oxford.

PoD#4920. 13th June 2018. Sumburgh Head, Shetland Islands.

PoD#5690. 22nd July 2020. Sumburgh Head, Shetland Islands.

And today - Picture of the Day #6000 (which means I've been at this malarky for 16 years, 5 months and a few days). This one taken with a 24MP Sony A7iii.

Picture of the Day #6000. 28th May 2021. Headington, Oxford

My top tips for taking a picture every day.

1. Always have a camera with you, decent phone cameras make this easier now.

2. Take a picture of something first thing in the morning, you'll probably see something more interesting later, but it's good to have something 'in the bag'.

3. Get outside if you can, even if it is just to walk between meetings or to the shops, there are lots more photo opportunities away from the desk and sofa.

4. Label your pictures - there's time and date metadata saved with the photo, but not (usually) useful information about the subject matter. I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog and caption my images - other tools are available.

5. Save your pictures somewhere safe - on another device or in the cloud (or better yet, both).

Follow Me!

My daily pictures usually wind up being posted on Twitter and on Blipfoto (a photo sharing site that encourages - and limits - you to post just one picture a day) - do follow me on one or both of these sites.