For the 100x group, this year I chose the theme "bird life and action." I decided to focus on 10 sets of bird activities, from flying to feeding, gathering in flocks to caring for their young. The themes of each "strip" of 10 photos are as follows:
Row 1: birds in flight
Row 2: more birds in flight
Row 3: birds with spread wings
Row 4: calling or singing birds
Row 5: feeding birds
Row 6: flocking birds
Row 7: birds in water
Row 8: nesting birds
Row 9: nesting great blue herons
Row 10: juvenile birds (outside the nest)
Since I photographed them in sets, this completes the image, though, alas, the different sizes of the birds and the different photo lengths keeps it from being as coherent an image as I had in mind. (I prefer the 120-image montage I made from photos I took last year, when I was trying to figure out if this idea would work. It can be seen here: www.flickr.com/photos/cherylmolin/53434596018)
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For the 100x group, this year I chose action shots, largely to give me motivation to practice photos that can be difficult (and where my cameras have serious limitations, to be honest). I specifically wanted to improve in shots of birds in flight and insects in action.
I chose to do it in thematic stripes . . . though some themes worked better than others, and some ended up a little bit random. Here are the themes from top to bottom:
Groups of ten:
1. Birds in flight
2. Birds displaying feathers
3. Mammals in action
4. Insects in flight
5. Insects in other action
6. Birds in water
7. Birds nesting (here I ended up using great blue herons for all the shots in the second half, though I did have nesting shots of at least two other species not included here)
8. Other animals in motion (I ended up finishing the set with more shots of birds and mammals)
9. More insects in action (flying/mating/eating each other)
10. Motion blur
This just got way too complicated, to be honest. I probably needed to stick with birds or insects. (Focusing on mammals would largely mean deer and fox squirrels, or I'd happily focus on them. I just don't see enough species regularly.) Nearly half, 47, are birds, and I have a good number of action shots I didn't include, so I may go back and make a collage of "birds in action," just for fun.
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My 100x challenge for 2021 was insects, one shot per species and ideally no repeats from 2020 unless I got them in a different form. I did accidentally get the eastern pondhawk twice, forgetting I'd already gotten one, and I included a mating pair of monarchs to end the collection even though I included a monarch caterpillar last year. And last year included a couple of creepy crawlies that weren't insects. But it's nearly 200 species in the two years.
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