Picture of the Day 2025
January
January marks my first month back of taking a picture every day of the year. The rules are simple: Take a photo every day. I try to take pictures with my standalone cameras. However, iPhone photos are acceptable, especially if the image on the iPhone best captures the day's main activity. I also counted photos my wife took that I was a part of if they also captured the central part of that day.
This month, I enjoyed many great photos. I am much more eager to start this challenge again this year because I am moving to Japan. I also recently acquired a Ricoh GRIIIx HDF, which makes having a camera on me at all times much more viable.
I used all my camera equipment this month, but most of which was with the Ricoh. I managed to carry the Ricoh with me during the Twin Mountain Trudge, a ten-mile race in the snow that I traveled to Laramie, Wyoming (By way of Colorado Springs) to attend. The result was the photo from 11 January of my friend Clayton steadily trudging through the mountains of Laramie.
I was excited to be able to fly my DJI Mini 4 Pro in Colorado and Wyoming. It’s not every day that I have a good reason to break out the drone, but it does pretty well in cold and windy conditions, and I got to fly it generally near Pike’s Peak in Colorado, resulting in a photo of a mountain view on 10 January. Additionally, Topsail Island, NC, randomly got the first snow day in many years, so naturally, I had to get an overhead view of the snow on the beach and capture the rare combination of salt, snow, and sand from above. I particularly like the photo from 22 January because the beach is seemingly endless, which provides leading lines away and gives a sense of isolation to the subject, the man walking his dog in the snow. The infinite beach makes the man seem small in comparison, which I particularly like in my photos. One of my earliest memories on the internet was finding Zdislaw Beksinksi’s Valley of Death painting, which I think captures this concept well. I posted this photo on Facebook and got around 450 likes, which, by my standards, is a total success.
I used my Sony A7IV, Sony FE 85mm, and Sony Gm 35mm lenses to photograph my truck and motorcycle, which I am apprehensively selling before leaving for Japan. I love my truck, but it is just too expensive to go into storage for three years, and I cannot take the bike with me. So naturally, I had to get great photos so the truck would sell and I would have something to remember. I also wanted to see how I looked when riding the motorcycle, so I took a picture of that. I am sad to get rid of both of these, but I am not upside down on the truck, and the motorcycle is going to a friend. There will always be more bikes and trucks.
I managed to take only one iPhone photo this month, and that was the armed lobster resisting his fate. I tried to retake this photo on my Ricoh, but sometimes, the first try is the best. The lobster eventually succumbed to his fate, like all of us inevitably.
The overall theme for the month was snapshots with my Ricoh, followed by film presets and/or black and white. The film presets hide some grain that the Ricoh adds with the lowlight, so it pairs well. However, the goal for next month is to do more black and white. February will be a challenge for photography because we will be preoccupied with moving and more or less stuck not traveling (other than a trip home to Tampa), which doesn't make for an interesting subject matter. In light of this, refreshing some Photoshop skills and utilizing black and white to create interesting subject matter will be the key for next month.
Click on the photos below to see the full gallery.
