I’ve been toying with starting a 365 for a while now and was finally talked into it today. But where to start? Nothing of any major photographic or personal significance has happened today. Then I started thinking about my reasons for doing this, which include the hope that I’ll see some sort of progression in the pictures I take over the year ahead. That made me think back to how I’ve progressed over the last year.

Just over a year ago at the start of September 2008 my only camera fitted snugly in the small brown crumpler on the left. It was a second hand Ricoh Caplio R5 that mum gave me for my birthday the previous year when she upgraded to a better camera. My friend’s moby took higher res pictures. But it was mine and it let me capture some of the amazing sunrises on the prom – on days when it didn’t throw a wobbly and refuse to work.

In early September 2008 I braved torrential downpour to see La Princesse waking up outside the Echo Arena. The drenching killed my old camera, giving me a perfect excuse to get something better, my lovely Lumix. The only two pictures I’ve ever exhibited were taken with the Lumix. It also took the pictures that led to me joining the Fab Collective back in January.

And much as I loved my Lumix, surrounded by the Collective with all their DSLRs, lenses and funky old film cameras, I felt like quite a tourist with my little compact. I borrowed a DSLR (aka fabcam) for the Collective’s days out doing street photography and I got the bug. In June when I won the Daily Post ferry competition I put the prize money towards my Nikon D60 – and a funky red Crumpler bag to put it in of course.

In 9 months I went from owning a camera the size of a large matchbox to a DSLR. I don’t know what all the buttons on it do yet but I’m learning. Hopefully in 365 days I’ll have got my head round it a bit more. Taking more photos will help me to do this in theory. It can’t hurt I suppose.

Hey ho, here goes nothing. 1 down, 364 to go…