52/50 : A project by Alexander Gage

Alexander Gage has been active in our little corner of the interwebs here at Silber Studios for a long time.  He’s a British expat who lives and works in Switzerland. We admire the absolute passion Alex has for photography and wanted to let you know about a project he did over the course of a year that we thought was pretty cool.

For the duration of 2012, Alex participated in his own, self-imposed 52 photography project. The “52/50 Photography Project”, was shot solely using a 50mm lens which Alex found  to be the most challenging out of his collection. The project turned out to be both immensely enjoyable and educational. We all know how difficult it can be find the time to take and publish a single shot once a week, especially if you have a pesky day job that gets in the way.  The end result, in our judgement, seems to have justified the year long effort. It’s amazing to see how a bite sized goal like 1 picture a week resulted in quite a collection of photos.

You can see Alex’s work by clicking on his mirror gallery in Google+

Here’s Alex commenting on the process in his own words:

• I underestimated how time consuming such a project would be and how remarkably difficult it was to take a single (publishable) shot within a week, particularly in addition to the day job which always took priority.

• Related to the above, I found that planning and preparation were the most important aspect to get right for this project to succeed. Walking around town and looking for photographic opportunities is a lot of fun, but across the span of a year there will be those times when you have little time, or you feel tired, fed up, or even ill. A plan or an idea can help you focus during these times. I kept a notebook of ideas of types of shots (indoor and outdoor) that I wanted to try and referred to that when I was feeling uninspired.

• Having said the above, a lot of my shots were taken on the spur of the moment as the opportunity arose. (e.g. the “Firestarter” shot was completely unplanned.) The old adage that you should always have your camera with you worked out well in those instances, even if you can’t always rely on the the fact that such an opportunity will present itself (particularly before that ever present deadline of Sunday night).

• I chose the 50mm lens because it was completely outside of my comfort zone and the one which I found to be the most challenging. The 50mm is now my favorite lens and after almost a year I know it inside out. It is portable, fast, great in low light conditions and has a depth of field which I think adds a special quality to the pictures.

• The project has forced me to try out new ideas, experiment and generally have a lot of fun with my photography. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is prepared to put in the extra time.

Thank you Alex for sharing your work and the things you learn from this project with us. If you have a project of your own that you’d like to share with us, drop a line and let us know!