Today is the 3rd Worldwide Photowalk, hosted in cities everywhere. I participated in the downtown Durham, NC one.

I chose to travel light and I took only one lens on my T1i and carried it on my R-strap. That was a good choice as it was hot as hell and I was happy not to be lugging a lot of gear around. I did miss my macro lens a few times but I’ll go back to get some of those shot another day. The other gear I brought that I would highly recommend for anyone doing this in the heat were a wide brim hat and a camel back for water – those made all the difference in making it a great walk and not a hellish one.

The whole walk was great and we had a pretty nice crowd. I’ve shared my favorite shots from today on Flickr.

Well, I’m past the half way point for my Project 365! Even to my own surprise, I haven’t missed a single day yet.

It’s been a great way to force me to explore new techniques and subjects. One of the coolest aspects is that I can remember something about every single day this year by looking at the photos. It also reminds me that time moves far too fast!

The other aspect that I haven’t done enough of is the great community participation. Other people doing these projects contribute to flickr pools and we comment on each other’s work. That’s been helpful motivation to keep going and also provided some inspiration to try new shots. For the second half of the year I’m going to try and browse and comment on more of other people’s work.

I quit Facebook this weekend and I left Twitter a few months ago. I quit Facebook once before by deleting my account but I found that I still wanted to be able for friends and family to see photos and stuff so this time I’ve kept it active and have my Flickr account linked to it. We’ll see how long that lasts before I actually go delete it again.

The signal to noise ratio is all wrong on these platforms. Even after keeping your friends list trimmed and hiding all of the stupid games and such, what value are these sites bringing to your life? Sure, I like to keep up with people I care about but I can do that by actually talking to them. The bulk of the posts are not anything that will affect my life in any way, positive or negative. The time sink that these sites create though, will.

Social networking can be an addiction more than a value add to your day; just another way to kill time instead of doing something productive or with lasting value to your life. I quit watching network television a couple years ago for the same reasons and I don’t miss that either. Go cold turkey for a month and tell me what you’re missing… IF you can make it that long.