picture a day - thoughts so far

if i haven't already shamelessly told you about and asked you to read it, i'm doing a photo of the day blog for 2008. that's right, one picture for each of the 365 days. wait, a sec, it's a leap year, i've made it harder on myself. now that i've been doing it for a month, i wanted to share some of the thoughts i've had on it so far. don't worry, i won't be doing this monthly. maybe just one more post on the matter at the end of the year.

what has become acutely clear is just how routine life is. yes we all know this, but doing a picture a day really crystallizes it. when you visit the same places nearly every day, follow the same routes to those places, and are as sedentary as i am, then finding something worthy of taking a picture, within that rote of daily life, becomes very difficult.

that brings me to my next point. i hadn't really thought of making this (quite literally) a snapshot of my life, nor did i think to make it otherwise. i knew i didn't want this to be pictures of what i did on a certain day and some commentary explaining it. that would likely (and that term is a gross understatement to the fact) be quite boring. but not to exclude that either if it was truly the most interesting occurrence of that day. what has been the general theme is whatever is the most interesting subject i encountered on a given day.

by far the biggest challenge has been finding that most interesting subject matter. the inspiration for doing this was encountering someone, something, or someplace that i said to myself 'that would make an interesting picture.' what i've realized in doing this project is that those moments were not as frequent as maybe i thought. certainly not every day. what i don't want to do is just take a picture of every little thing in my house or office or wherever just for the sake of taking a picture. that would defeat the purpose and surely evaporate my own interest in continuing to do this if i approached it with this defeatist attitude.

my hope is that i can capture something that is even somewhat interesting, if not just to me, then to others. i wouldn't want to keep reading it every day if there wasn't something that i found to be of interest every so often. are all the pictures winners? no, of course not. i can admit that. but each picture has something to it. some small shred of interest, to what extent of interesting is not equal though.

what has emerged as one of the most enjoyable parts of this project is the commentary. it gives me a forum for my own particular brand of whimsy. not only that, but it gives me a place to say why i think the picture was interesting and give it some context. but mostly because i enjoy making fun of things and often what i find interesting is something that i can poke fun at.

what's also a good feeling is the days you just know when you have the picture. where you see the subject and you see the story and your work for the day is done. it sure beats those days where you're struggling to find it. to relate a story; one day it was 11:30 at night and i was finished getting groceries, but didn't have a picture to post yet. so i had to drive around the neighborhood for 10 minutes just to find something, anything as i hadn't to that point. i hate those days because it's a struggle for something that should be easy (pointing and shooting), but for the sake of integrity, it's hard.

in doing this for a month, i haven't had to adjust life to much to accommodate a daily update. but it's winter and i'm less active outside of my usual routine. but i know the future holds some trips, or some long days or periods without access to a computer and i hope i can maintain the daily posting. it sounds lame, but i want to keep the integrity of the project and actually do it every day.

overall, it hasn't been too cumbersome. but again, we're only a month in. i'm looking forward to completing it though. i like the challenge. i don't know if rewarding is the right word because i don't know what reward i'd get. it's just something different and fun, and i've enjoyed it so far.

there is a lot i've not explored for subject matter or techniques. and that will help keeping it exciting. i still havn't staged shots, haven't gone for the true beauty shot, haven't done the picturesque scenery shot, no color adjusted shots yet, and there's still some other sourcing avenues i wanted to use as well. stay tuned.