P365

01/01/26 – New Year’s Day: a typical January overcast with flat light. I rarely have a plan or subject in mind, so I walked to a local park – somewhere I go often – simply to get the ball rolling. I was drawn to this bench, and the touching memorial left there.

Tool of choice

I want to get the gear bit out of the way up front: the camera I’ll be using is one which has mostly sat on a shelf for years ever since I acquired it. For context, the great majority of my picture-taking life has been spent on 35mm film SLR’s, with a DSLR thrown into the mix since somewhere around 2005. So I figured this project could be a good opportunity to get to know this little-used (and physically little) camera: a Canon Ixus 200 IS. It’s a pocketable digital point-and-shoot. Aside from the fact of digital being convenient, during an afternoon playing with this camera over Christmas I found the feature which meant I would use it here: it has a dedicated black-and-white mode. That was it, decided.


I tend to set digital cameras up like the SLR film cameras I understand; as basic as possible. Although cameras like this Canon are for the most part unavoidably automatic, I’ll be using it as manually as possible: black and white only, no flash, no lens filters, you get the picture.


I really dislike having to spend time on digital images after capture, so I strive to end-up with the bare minimum of post-processing needed. I might fiddle with contrast and overall brightness a bit, and crop when it improves a composition; otherwise that’s about it.

So it begins

“Project 365” is a popular photography project which many folks undertake. The idea is to save one image every day for a year. It’s not important on which day in any given year it starts, but as it happens I did begin on the 1st of January 2026 after some loose planning over Christmas. I attempted this once before a few years ago using my preferred medium: 35mm film. I abandoned it after several months when a sudden rise in film and processing costs made the activity unsustainable. This time I’m using a digital camera.


When thinking about doing a blog involving photography I knew I didn’t want it to be a ‘review’ vehicle. I’m no expert in terms of equipment; such gear as I have is simply what I’ve accumulated over the years, for various reasons. As mentioned elsewhere I attempted a P365 once before – and I will do it on film another time. However, for these images the digital camera will be set as similarly as possible to the film cameras I have used for more years than I care to remember.


I don’t propose to write reams about the photos; just some words about how or why I took them. As I write it is the 25th of January. Assuming I get to the stage of having something of a workflow; rather than post daily I’ll try uploading a week’s worth at a time. So there may be a rush of pictures at the start – I’m winging all of this so let’s see how it goes.