I have not completed a daily photography project since, literally, the day I turned 21.
When I started that one, it had been more than a year since finishing the last. My first 365 was started when I was about to head to England for eight months, about to start my first year of university. It was started when I received my first DSLR, as a way to learn more about using digital cameras (having spent the five years before with a point-and-shoot, and the summer with film). It was a way to record my day-to-day experiences. With those I was trying to become good. The second 365 was a series of daily self-portraits started the day I turned 20, and ended the day I turned 21. It was not to become good, but it was to document.
This is not to document. It’s not to become used to a camera. It’s to become better, and it’s to become grounded.
Things have changed for me since my last daily project. I’ve graduated university and started a full-time job in a field that is not photography and is more focused on words than visuals. I don’t pick up my camera on a daily basis anymore. When I do, it’s more diaristic — which isn’t bad, but it isn’t what I need right now.
I am starting this 366 to push myself. To, as someone put it a few months ago when talking to me about my work, “get good.” There’s a great deal of room for improvement — in editing, in intent, in subject. That’s the short of it.
So here we are. Here’s week one. I plan to update about once a week for the next 52 weeks. Not everything will be good, because not everything can be in three hundred and sixty six images. But I want to post them knowing I did the best I can.
I’ll see you around the 14th.
Click the images to view them in a lightbox at full size.
1/1
Gus Powell, Six Street Exercises:
"180 Degrees:" Whenever you find something that gets your attention, make your picture(s) and then take a 180 degree turn and photograph in that opposite direction with equal or greater vigor. Never forget that things are happening behind you and that whatever you are photographing sees both you and all that is behind you.
1/2
MTA Bus Time told me I had 7 minutes before my bus came, so I settled down on the bench to wait. I took a photo of the fire hydrant across the street, then, inspired by Gus Powell’s street exercises, decided to make a short exercise out of it, waiting until each person crossing my frame got to the center and then taking a photo.
1/3
I set out originally with a different exercise in mind — which turned out fine, but I liked this accidental concept better. The top row is the same subject shot from different sides, edited. The bottom row is where I was standing when I shot the photos above, unedited.
1/4
"The Fantasy"
The previous owner of this apartment left behind a wall painted with birds, and as I was testing flash I noticed my copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales (okay, one of my four copies) had similarly silhouetted birds on the spine and cover. I reddened the cheek and lips in editing to emulate the cover art.
1/5
Colour study. Thanks Maria for the inspiration.
1/6
Quick snaps of the usual: waiting for the train home.
1/7
"It's a fig."