2/365: A grandma’s love
27/365: Making some observations
187/365: “But it’s a dry heat”
If you follow me on Twitter, you know last year I embarked on a year-long photographic journey: take and a share a photo every day throughout the year. I successfully completed the project and wanted to wrap it up with some thoughts.
You can view all 365 photos in this Flickr album.
I also put together a 65-photo album of some of my favorites.
Part of my inspiration for this project was Stephen Hackett who did a 365-photo project in 2017 that I was following. Plus, since taking photos is a creative outlet for me, I wanted to get into taking photos more regularly, so this seemed like a great way to do that.
My goal each day was to post either something I encountered during the day I thought was interesting or something I thought somehow represented the day.
Some examples of things I encountered I thought were interesting:
338/365: Sign on the highlighted lines
352/365: Just a spladder of clouds today
Some examples of things I thought represented the day:
160/365: Take me out to the ballgame
194/365: I couldn’t NOT have fries on National French Fry Day! #fatguyfriday
Some days were easier than others—days where I was traveling or exploring a part of L.A. that was for me new or less-frequented. And some days were harder than others—days where I didn’t go anywhere (or anywhere beyond my normal places) or didn’t have a photo I thought was interesting enough. There was a week or two where I was so uninspired and uninterested I wanted to give up. But I kept going, and I’m glad I did.
There were two things in particular that were helpful to keep me going. One was varying the routes I took getting places. I do a lot of walking, so I learned to go different ways and explore new streets and alleys. That helped to discover new things.
And a second thing was when I would find and take a photo of something interesting but wouldn’t use it for that day’s photo, I added it to a Trello board so I wouldn’t forget about it. Then on another day, I would go back to that thing and retake the photo for that day.
A Challenge Inside a Challenge
As if the overall project weren’t enough of a challenge, about halfway through the year, I decided the titles for my photos needed more what I called Michael Giacchino track titles—more puns, rhymes, and wordplay. (Michael Giacchino is one of my favorite film/tv/video-game composers, and his scores often have creative track titles. For example, here are the tracks for DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, JURASSIC WORLD, and SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING.)
This added a challenge on top of a challenge, but especially for photos I didn’t find as interesting, I wanted to spice them up a bit with bad puns. It was a way for me to have a little more fun with the project.
Some examples:
243/365: My heart was in the wrought place
250/365: Ranger Rick’s restful recommendation
346/365: Make sure to have red and understood
Software
All photos in the series were taken with an iPhone: most with iPhone X, many with iPhone XS, and a couple (the photos that had an iPhone X in them) with iPhone 7. The majority were taken with the default Camera app because when my phone is locked and I need a quick photo, there’s no beating lock screen access to Camera.
But I did also often use the manual camera app Halide. I find many manual camera apps overwhelming; they have so much going on they become intimidating or convoluted. But Halide keeps things simple while still being powerful: it doesn’t let the UI and features get in the way of the fundamental purpose of the app—taking photos. One of my favorite features of Halide is the ability to highlight what’s in focus, so when I’m composing a shot and want a particular thing in focus, this feature is helpful for exactly that.
Once I had the photo, I then applied some edits to it. When I started the project, I was using the photo editor built in to Photos to adjust lighting and color and to crop and straighten. This is fine for quick edits. About halfway through the year, though, I started using Darkroom to edit my photos. Darkroom is a powerful, easy-to-use photo editor that gave me more precise tuning for straightening and adjusting light and color. I often find iPhone X and XS photos to be touch too green, and Darkroom has a tint adjustment to add a hint of purple to the photo.
And then once I had the photo and made a few tweaks to it, I posted it to Flickr, Twitter, and Instagram through a multi-step Shortcuts shortcut that gave me more control than posting it in one place and have it auto-post to the others. Some of the steps in my shortcut included generating the day number text (e.g. “216/365”), opening Metapho so I could remove location data from the photo before sharing, expanding the Flickr short url because at one point during the year Twitter decided tweets with the short url were spam, and composing a tweet in Twitterrific and threading it with the previous tweets in the series. Since I was repeating the same steps each day to post my photos, I figured I could automate many of the steps with Shortcuts.
105/365: Hangin’ out
262/365: Colors²
342/365: Taking shapes
Some Advice
I have a few pieces of advice for anyone who might be considering embarking on a similar project.
Don’t get overly stressed (like I often would) if toward the end of the day you don’t have something you think is on the same level of your best photos. Not every day has to be a prize-winning photo. Grab a cherished nicknack, memento, or toy and frame it in an interesting way.
Similarly: Don’t do it for the likes. You aren’t doing this project for someone else (or at least I don’t think you are). You’re doing it for you. Post things that make you happy—not what you think will get the most likes.
It doesn’t have to be a Trello board, but I recommend having some sort of repository to keep photo drafts. There are going to be days you have more than one photo you want to post. Use the one that most speaks to you that day, and save the others somewhere so you can be reminded to retake them another day.
Have fun with the project. If (and let’s be honest: perhaps when) you find yourself dragging to find and post a photo each day and want to quit, try to remember what made you inspired to start in the first place, and try to recapture some of that spark. And also remember at the end of the year, you’re going to have fun looking back at a year’s worth of photos and the journey you took getting them. I know I have.
63/365: And the Oscar for best food and socks combo goes to…
155/365: Camo tree
221/365: This photo was stairing down at me
The End?
Would I embark on another 365 photo project? I’m really not sure. I do miss it in some regards, but I am happy to not have the pressure of finding a photo each day and trying to come up with a creative title (or, depending on your tolerance for puns, a really cringeworthy title!).
But I think instead of doing it again—at least this year—I want to keep up with taking photos in general and do it more often than I was before the project. As I said, taking photos is a creative outlet for me. I don’t have to post a photo every day or even every week, but I want to keep looking for interesting things and interesting ways to photograph those interesting things.
Whether or not I do another 365 project, I have these photos to look back on. If a picture really is worth a thousand words, I have 365,000 words to smile about. Plus all those bad puns.
Thanks for following along on this journey. Here’s to more photographic fun for everyone this year!
324/365: Joe’s Hrepresentations
341/365: Spheres, spears, and tears (if you touch it)
353/365: “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles” or “L.A.” for short
