Before I show all the photos I dug up, here’s mine (@TheBackpackr). My caption was, “1/1/2010: Grace and I started off the new year at our church, DUMC together with some 3,000 others. We gave thanks for the year gone by, our friends and family.”. The rest of my photos will be up on Facebook here.

And from Grace Tan my wife, also known these days as @ShootDiva. Her photos will be on Facebook here.

So, let’s cut to the chase… here’s what I found.

Thanks for participating: @BridalGlam, @annarina, @avrilchan, @qwertyjuan, @dannyfoo, @joycescapade, @yongschew, @andychin, @sochews, @sivinkit.

I do recommend using a dedicated site like a Facebook or Flickr album, Posterous, but not a blog as it becomes tedious to update and it will take precedence over your existing content. Also, Twitpic and Tweetphoto won’t really categorise your images, but sure, go ahead and use it if you really want.

I’ve listed #Project365 sites of people who have told me about their projects. Find them here.

Well, well, ladies and gentlemen… we are at the advent of yet another year. ’tis the time to make new resolutions and decide how we’re going to change for the better.

As I was perusing the Twittersphere (as I seemingly always do), I spotted a tweet by @GodsMac that talked about the idea of showcasing a photo a day of the life around you. He calls it Project 365. I thought, that’s pretty easy to do… and these days, with all the technology freely available, we can SURELY achieve that easily, right? (and yes, I may be dead wrong!).

Anyhow, I think I’ll give it a shot and use whatever means I have to share a photo a day with the world. I’m not going to go down the path of using a DSLR, but rather whatever implements I have (which probably spells out i-P-h-o-n-e). After all, setting the bar overly high will make it counterproductive, in my experience thus far.

I think I’ll stick with using Facebook to publish my photos, and once a month, I’ll create a montage of photos and post them here. This beats writing a diary (or even blogging, for that matter!).

Will you join me on this endeavour? So far, I’ve had some response from the Twittersphere on who will embark on this too.

Share your pictures with me (send me your URL whether Facebook / Flickr / etc), and I’ll be happy to highlight them here on a monthly basis too.

Here’s a few links to the homes of several Project 365ers. Leave a comment here if you’d like me to add your link here.

@andychin – andychin365.posterous.com

@annarina – Flickr

@astherlau – Facebook

@ben_israel – Facebook

@chaiyenw – chaiyen.blogspot.com

@chiayi91 – chiayi365.blogspot.com

Debbie Ng – Facebook

@edwintcg – Facebook

@ericcheong – Facebook

kankai – Flickr

@joycescapade – joycescapade.posterous.com

@leviasher – Facebook

@lucidconspiracy – lucid365.blogspot.com

@meiyingt – veraikon.wordpress.com

Mollytail – molytail365.blogspot.com

@petrinalee – petrina.posterous.com

@ProPhotoSafari – prophotosafari.com

@qwertyjuan – juan365.posterous.com

@rickrduncan – digitalredeye.com

@ShootDiva – Facebook

@sivinkit – Facebook

@the_boggler – Facebook

@TheBackpackr – Facebook

@yongschew – parenthood-adventure.blogspot.com

For the iPhone 3Gs, I did use the tap-to-focus on the subject feature. All photos are not touched up, and are saved at the highest quality after adding the watermark in Photoshop.

Initial observations are that the tap-to-focus on the iPhone 3Gs also is for metering, and in certain cases, can over or underexpose images depending on where you tap. Overall, the images from the iPhone 3G pale in comparison, as the iPhone 3Gs adds vibrance and a certain warmth to the images. Gone too is the milky film that overlays the iPhone 3G images.

A satisfying meal for a mere RM5.95? That’s a pretty sweet deal, and I thought so. When Grace and I found out there was a contest going on to write a creative blog post, we seized the opportunity to compete, as we do believe in the McValue lunches! We discussed a concept, whipped out our Canon 5D Mark 2 DSLR camera, a few lenses and off we went to McDonalds.

We also invited a good buddy, Joseph, to come along with us as he enjoys photography and videography too. Armed with our gear, we battled the traffic at the drive-thru and secured our spot. The friendly faces of the McDonalds crew were a delight to work with and they were ever so supportive of our crazy ideas!

Alright, enough about the history behind it, here’s our innovative and creative video clip, that is infused with some humor… NOW HAND OVER THE IPHONE… please?

If you have a faster Internet connection, do click on the HD icon above to watch it in MUCH better high-def quality!

Ingredients for a successful McValue Lunch:

• Canon 5D Mark 2 and a tripod
• 50mm F1.4, 135mm F2.0, 17-40mm F4, 70-200mm F4
• 1 MacBook Pro
• 1 iPhone (borrowed from Jo. Thanks!)
  
• 1 wheelchair
• A pair of Crocs
  
• 1 McDonalds VIP sticker
  
• Some friendly faces from the McDonald’s drive-thru
• A beautiful and skilled wife
• A friend named Joseph
• Oh, and 2 McValue meals of course! (which sure beat an average plate of noodles!)
  

Here are some behind-the-scenes shots of us having fun while filming.

Friendy Halim and I at the Bandar Utama drive-thru

Grace and Jo setting up the 5DMkII to pull focus

Joseph shooting a close-up of the iPhone

Weaving between cars was a challenge!

I chose to go with the latter, especially in light of the impending recession. I felt I would be able to address the audience on how to best utilize technology to overcome reductions in marketing budgets.

I was requested to send in some portrait pictures, and I sure didn’t want to send in passport mugshots, or anything that would remotely associate me with being a jailbird. So here’s a result of my creative wife’s skill.

So, what do you think? Top option or bottom one? Yeah, guys are entitled to be a little egotistical and full of themselves at times!

I started out The Backpackr project to see how far it would get and it’s been great fun. We fell a little short on unique visitors hitting our site, but made up for it in video views on YouTube. I’ll reveal our stats next week.

For now, I’m off for a cruise with my wife Grace (who runs Integricity Visuals and Wedding Story together with her business partners). It’s actually a work assignment from a client of hers who is coming up with a movie, and needs certain elements of the ship captured in photos and videos – so that it can be used in digital 3D recreations… amazing, huh? And of COURSE Grace can’t do the assignment alone, so she needs an adept assistant who will also share a cabin with her for cost saving reasons!

Woohooo, so Superstar Gemini, here I come… It’s not a long trip though… 3 days and 2 nights, SNORT! Let’s see… we leave on Saturday at 2pm, spend a night out at sea while heading down to Singapore, have a full Sunday on board, then disembark at 9am on Monday! WHERE’S MY 24 x 3 HOURS? It’s only 43 hours on board, not even a full TWO DAYS. Someone from the marketing team should learn how to count the hours.

Anyhow, it’s gonna be exciting, and here are two videos I found on YouTube that show what the Superstar Gemini is all about. Quality is a little crap, be warned…

Alright, I’ve got to go pack in our 2 camera bodies, flash lights, Panasonic AG-HVX202 HD video camera, notebooks, data storage drives, etc… oh yes, some clothes too, I guess…

This is called a “Gipsy” show – doubt it’ll be playing when we’re on board, but looks fairly cool.

Okay, we’re not going on the Superstar Virgo, but here’s their promo video. I hope we’ll get something like that!