Project 365

Project 365 is… well, here’s where it started. The idea was to take one photo every day–boring day, interesting day, weekend, weekday, doesn’t matter. It was an exercise for photographers, mostly, who could use the motivation and daily deadline to force themselves to practice and to get creative.

A lot of my friends did the project in 2008, not with the goal of becoming creative photographers but with the goal of documenting one thing that happened each day, a sort of visual journal. In 2009, without a lot of forethought, I started my own Project 365. You can see all the finished photos here or read the photoblog here; I took them with my cell phone, and there are fewer than 365 because I did not post any photos while we were in England or while I was in South Africa.

It’s kind of funny to scroll over the photos and watch an entire year go by. It’s like flipping through pages in a calendar, except I am, very literally, watching a year of our lives flash before my eyes. A year doesn’t look like a long time when you can flick through it in two seconds

The best thing about Project 365? You can’t pick what you remember each day. But you can pick your Picture of the Day, and many days it’s what you will wind up remembering from that day, because so many days seem unremarkable until you look for something remarkable in them. Events and memories just seem to happen to us. It’s good to have a reminder, even once a day, that we have some voice in the matter.

I’m going to do the exercise again in 2010. And you’re welcome to join!