I was inspired by this blog post to start a one camera, one lens project. I like the idea because it seems more about the shooting, culling and printing than it does about making a photo-a-day, which is the basis for so many projects.
Of course, my mind started rambling and I began to think about how the project could be displayed, and how it might be cool to actually display it as it progressed, perhaps every quarter or even month. Since the printing portion trails the shooting portion and is only loosely tied to the particular shots, the collection would follow the printing schedule.
But how to display? I thought that a grid/collage would be cool. I want to display them chronologically; I think the there's something to be learned from the progression. The problem is mixing portrait and landscape; I tend to shoot a mixture. Mixing the two formats in a grid is untidy at best. I could crop to make a better mosaic, but then I'm editing/curating as a whole work and that's not what interests me.
The solution is simple: shoot in 1:1 . This may make things a bit "Instagrammy", but I think it's worth the risk. Adding another restriction may be my downfall.
So here are my personal rules:
I love the fact that when I set the Fuji to B/W and 1:1, that's what I see in the viewfinder. I can compose not just for the aspect but for the tonal nature of B/W. I shoot RAW+JPG, so the actual full color/aspect images are captured and retained, and it surprises me how interesting they are compared to the image I saw when I made it. Not better or worse, just different, and different from how I might normally compose for content and tone.
Another thing is that I tend to take a lot of similar images as I tend to work in shooting around my daily schedule. I'm in many of the same places from day to day, so finding new and interesting images will become a larger and larger challenge.