Just dropping by to tell you about an awesome new project I am doing in 2016: taking part in a (free!) online photography course for the whole of the year, called A Year with my Camera and run by Emma Davies.

Every Thursday, the participants get an email from Emma with some tips and advice and a project to complete over the course of the week.

There’s a Facebook group and an Instagram hashtag (#ayearwithmycamera) to showcase your pics and, seemingly, thousands of participants to give you feedback!

I love this idea because I’m hoping it will give me the shove I need to get out there and take photos (with my proper camera) far more often than I manage at the moment. I plan to carve an hour a week to go and take a few snaps and just focus on improving one thing each time.

The first project this week is to choose something to “collect” over the year – an item you will photograph frequently to create a collection by the end of December.

I’m torn between a few different thoughts. The dilemma boils down to whether I stick with something I already do and try to improve that or whether I pick something new that I would like to do more of?

In the first camp: all things botanical, probably with the macro lens, which I already do quite a bit but would like to improve more. (I dream of creating beautiful images like this by @zuzu365 – whose whole feed is full of stunning botanical photography – and this by @thislittlecorner which uses the branches in the foreground to give extra interest to that stunning background…)

In the second camp, I have seen quite a few awesome puddle reflection photos recently on Instagram (@camerashymomma is my absolute favourite for this with her #creatingliquidlandscapes series) and I’d love to try and get some great shots of my parts of London reflected in puddles.

The problem with trying something completely new with the puddle shots is that I simply might not get the opportunity to keep that up regularly (if it’s not raining, or if I don’t go anywhere new with interesting reflections in that week). But then just sticking to botanicals isn’t really stretching me to try out anything new and surely it’s a good idea to take the opportunity to stretch myself?!

I went out this morning to get started and decided that, for now, I will photograph both of them and see how it pans out over the course of the year.

I will mostly be taking part over on Instagram, I think, so do follow along there if you’d like: @wolvesinlondon. (The Facebook group is terrifying me at the moment, as it seems to be full of “blippers” a term I had never come across before, but have discovered is someone who posts a photo every single day on a website called blipfoto, and who seem – to me – to be essentially as good as professional photographers already and keep sharing these utterly amazing and technically perfect shots, so I am feeling a bit intimidated of putting up my own distinctly more amateur take…)

Anyway, if you also fancy joining in, then you can sign up here: A Year with my Camera.

And do drop me a comment to let me know if you’re taking part (and especially if you’re on that terrifying Facebook group too, ha ha, I’d love to see some friendly names out there!)