So last year as I walked into a Home Depot, an idea came to me about how Laura and I could work on our photography. We would take at least one photo every day for a year and post one and only one photo from every day onto Flickr accounts that only she and I could see. We started on November 1, 2013 and started taking photographs every day and then posting one of them to the Flickr account. Initially we were very good about taking the photo for each day and posting it the same day, but as time passed, we would get a few days behind on posting, but still had to take at least one photo every day. Some days were very challenging and given that it was fall/winter, we were stuck in our homes looking for something to take a picture of. There were a lot of holiday themed photos. My daughter would laugh at me wondering around the house at 9:30pm looking for something to take a photo of. Some of those photos had the look and feel of desperation, but some of them proved to be a great exercise in really finding creativity.
Over the 12 months we committed to this project, we tweaked the rules a little. After probably 3 months of “photo every day”, we started to add themes or exercises to each week. We worked with color, motion, textures and patterns, water, etc., in order to 1) give us something to focus on so we weren’t walking around aimlessly looking for a shot and 2) to force us to think about what would represent the theme well and how to work with our camera to capture a shot. We had some weeks that we got behind and then made new rules for how to get caught up, but we ended the year-long project on October 31st of this year with 365 photos in our Flickr Daily Photo Album. I am really proud of how we stayed committed and stuck with the project for a full 365 days. I learned a lot about my camera, I learned a lot about how to find an interesting photo; it was a good project and I am glad I had a sister who was willing to go along with the idea.
At the end of that first year’s project, we decided to also start this blog as a way of continuing with our photography, but expanding it to our other areas of interest that would add some variety to what we think about every day. I love the blog so far. We do not have any rules, we just blog whenever the moment hits us and we can post photos as well as other content.
However, we are supposed to be starting another year-long project centered on photography and I am finding it hard to get motivated to start. I need a fresh idea, I need inspiration, I need something to get me going. I am considering asking Laura if we should take a 2 month break and start the year on Jan 1. I need a creative breakthrough, I have photographer’s block. I’m tired of my house, I’m tired of my yard, I need a new perspective…Send help!
The great thing about photography is that I can see Laura and I continuing with it for many, many years to come. We plan on traveling together just so we can take photographs that we have time to plan and think about and work until we get a perfect photo. Non-photographers do NOT want to travel with you when you slow down for every possible photo and thus the photographer never really gets to work with their camera, the setting and the light to get that really awesome shot. I look forward to trips when we just park ourselves in a place that we will make a thorough photographic study of.
Now if creative inspiration would just float down and settle into the right side of my brain so I could get going on the current project….
