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Day 1

So now that the two years of shooting have ended, I figured I would do a quick wrap-up.  After only missing a few days out of two years, I can say that I am extraordinarily happy with the way things turned out.  When I first started, I stole the idea from Rebecca, and thought that it sounded like a really cool thing to do.  I just didn’t know if I had it in me to stick with it for a full year. Boy, was I wrong.  I knew that in the past, my blogging skills/energy had gone in spurts — I was good at posting for a while and then I would slowly drop off.

Day 366

Eventually I would regain steam and get going again, but the cycles got longer and the frequency decreased over time.  Secretly I just hoped that I could make it a couple of months.  I set a bunch of goals within the main goal (i.e. taking a self portrait once a month on the last day of the month) that fell through, but I am proud that I was able to take at least one image on more than 99% of the days.  The further I got into the project, the less it came about proving something to myself, as it was about the art of the project and the capture of a single moment linked to an experience.

Day 731

I was able to take some amazing images along the way (and I shot some terrible images as well!).  In order to publish the 730 or so images on the site, I shot more than 10,000 images.  This is actually a really good ratio for me — when I shoot film I am happy to get one good image off of a roll of 24 or 36.  Most days I shot between 3 and 8 pictures, but some days it was just one.  Others, especially when I was traveling, it could be 200.

Mother's Day 2008

I found myself looking at the world around me more – not necessarily looking for “the shot” but really just noticing the little details.  Sometimes that was electrical wires overhead, or the play of light off of dew drops on flowers.  Other times I noticed cool graffiti, posters, litter, or people.

Even more than just taking in little details, I feel that I was able to push myself to become a better photographer.  Going into day one of the experience, if you had asked me what kind of things I like to shoot, I would have told you landscapes.  Landscapes are easy — they don’t object when you take their picture, they can reward your patience in making your mental image match what gets recorded in the camera, and landscapes more instantly accessible to a viewer.

Dancing

Through this project, I pushed myself to take pictures that fell outside of my normal comfort range.  I got over my embarrassment of pulling out my camera in “weird” places like restaurants,  the opera, and work.  I tried to take more portraits.  I shot both micro and macro. I took obvious images as well as abstracted ones.  I mainly just tried to not limit what I was shooting.  There were times I even found myself taking the same shot – months apart.

Coming home after a first date

One of the biggest things I enjoyed in the process, was taking pictures that held emotional content for me.  I wasn’t shooting for the audience on those days. I wasn’t setting out to make a beautiful image.  I was taking a picture that represented how I felt, reflected in the environment around me.  Some of those days were painful – getting bad new or going through emotional trauma – but some were exuberant.

I love the fact that I can go back and take a look at almost any of the images, and remember that moment when I took the picture.  I have documented two years of my life that weren’t smooth sailing; years that I will look back on as a major stage of defining who I am and how I see myself. I can look back through the images and see the people that have been in my life and provided heckling, entertainment, support, joy, pain, and the whole gamut of interactions. Some of the people in the images were just passing through my life, while others have been constants.

Shadow

I thought I would be limited by the technology at hand.  I have lusted after, drooled over, and dreamed about a top of the line DSLR.  most of the images that I took, were with a pocket point and shoot.  While the control and quality of images was greater when taken with a DSLR, the ease of carrying around a workhorse of a camera and pushing it to get interesting shots couldn’t be beat.  (I still want the Canon 7D or 5D Mark II, don’t worry!).  There were times when I left my big camera and my little camera somewhere, and the crappy camera in my cell phone had to suffice.  In those cases it was less about the number of pixels, and more cool to have a shot of George Clinton from 10 feet away.

In the end, what it all came down to, was that I was having fun. I have still been taking images since the last day of the second year — I have just been taking a few more opportunities to leave the camera behind.  I am sure that I will pick it up again soon, but in the mean time, I have been resting.

I did put year two’s images into a video slideshow (Project 365 – Year 2) and I promise I will finish the book from the first year at some point.  I want to get some of them printed and framed for myself.  But, this has been incredibly fun, and I am looking forward to what comes next.

Stay tuned to see what comes next.

Cheers,

Matt