This is a few days later than I’d intended, but I suppose that’s better than nothing. OPAD has now actually lasted 6 months. I’m very surprised to be honest. I tend to drop things very quickly or get burnt out and let that get the better of me, but I’ve somehow kept this going regardless of my opinions on it. The plan for this post is that I’ll go over my thoughts on the project so far, both positives and negatives, then I’ll pick a photo from each of the last 6 months, then finally I’ll talk about the future of all this.
OPAD Thoughts
Let’s get the negatives out of the way. A lot of the photos I’ve posted have been throwaways and lazy. I was going to say that September is a good example of this, but looking at it, there are less than I remember. I suppose whenever I use a photo from inside it feels lazy. Anyway, this has made me want to drop OPAD and think it’s a waste of time, but over the last few days I’ve started to see it differently. This is less a problem with OPAD itself, and more a problem with me. To be honest, I don’t do anything. I spend a lot of time inside, and hence don’t have many opportunities for interesting photos. I mean, there’s only so much I can try inside. There are smaller issues, such as with wanting the technical side of it to improve, but they’re much less impactful than this.
Now anyway, the positives. Firstly, I’ve kept this going for 6 months. I explained at the start that I tend to drop things very quickly. But I haven’t dropped this yet. I’ve kept it going regardless of what I think of it. That’s an achievement on its own. Secondly, all the improvements made to the site over the last 6 months have pretty much been due to OPAD. I have implemented OPAD itself, I’ve reworked the site into a Docker image and set up a CI/CD workflow, I’ve set up deploy scripts, I’ve written more posts. I wouldn’t have done any of that if I hadn’t started this. I would’ve just kept on trying to learn a new framework every few months and dropping it within a few days. There’s also the WebAssembly experiments I’ve ended up putting here.
Favourite Photos
April
This is one of the most successful trichromes I’ve gotten, and it’s from my very first roll!
May
One of the first times I tried photographing insects. This ones wings were wet from being sprayed by someone in the kitchen, so stayed quite still.
June
I started experimenting with motion and slower shutter speeds around this time.
July
We saw multiple sunsets on this holiday, and they were all lovely. Shame a lot of the film didn't turn out good.
August
This was the most difficult month to pick out one photo from. I did take a lot of photos of bees over the summer and wanted to include at least one of them.
September
There were more photos I liked this month than I remembered. I like how they were looking back at me, and also how the window created some interesting lighting effects with the reflections. I saw it as a nuisance when taking the photos but I don't think it is now.
The Future
I don’t know what to say about the future of this project. Towards the end of September, I was really considering dropping it. But now that I’ve actually reached this milestone I think that’d be stupid. I might as well just continue and get to a year right? So I’ve decided that as of now, the only time I’m going to actually decide to end this is after a year. I will continue trying to develop and improve the website, and experiment with my photography more. With the issue of me not doing anything, I’m not sure how to handle it. It’s a bigger problem than just OPAD. It’s not something that I’ll probably write about again so I’ll just say that I’ll work on it and leave it at that.
Regardless of all that, I look forward to all the future photos and experiments.
-- Lolei <3