My Project365 Ends

Last year, on July 8, 2009, I started a project to take a photograph a day for 365 days. Two days ago, I reached that marker. For some reason, even though I thought I kept careful track of missed days, I am short the 365 photographs. Yesterday I struggled with which completely arbitrary marker I most wanted to honor: documenting exactly one year of my life or making it to 365 photographs. I chose the former.

I really enjoyed this project and highly recommend that everyone do it at least once. Primarily because it helps focus you quite a bit on your everyday surroundings. I found myself looking around me far more often and noticing elements of my apartment, my walk to work, etc., that I would easily have missed if I weren’t trying to find a photograph for each and every day. It helps get a person into the habit of not just looking, but seeing. I do feel that for the project to succeed, having a public account somewhere, and posting your photos on a regular basis is important. Even if you aren’t interacting with others about your series, posting in a public space makes you (well, made me) feel more responsible to staying on target and keeping up than if I’d simply been taking photos and putting them on my computer.

I won’t be doing Project365 again this year, but can easily see myself choosing to do it again sometime in the next few, and I believe that I’ll be more likely to carry my Lumix DMC-TZ4 with my on a daily basis to take random and (hopefully) interesting photographs, or even just take more snapshots with my camera phone, than I might if I hadn’t done this project.

Click through to see a few of my favorite pictures from the year:

My First:

My Last:

A few of my favorites:

Please let me know if any of you start a Project365, because I would love to follow along.