Day 100

I don’t know how many times I’ve started and subsequently abandoned some variation of Project 365 (wherein the challenge is to take a photo every day for a year)—at least as many times as I’ve started The Brothers Karamazov. I started again on my birthday this year, and today marks the hundredth day. I didn’t blog about it from the beginning because I have an annoying (at least to me) habit of announcing these kinds of grand plans and then not following through. But here we are, and I’m still enjoying myself, so I thought I’d share some thoughts about how it’s going so far.

There have definitely been more days than I like that I don’t pick up the camera until after 10 pm. On those days I inevitably end up with some incredibly lame shot. A true low point was just a few days ago: I had neglected the camera all day, and Jason was trying to get Simon to go back to sleep, so I didn’t want to go down the creaky creakola stairs to get it. I had to resort to using the iSight on Jason’s computer. Not my best work.

I’ve also had to be flexible on the rules to avoid discouragement and/or the project becoming nothing more than a chore. (Really, there’s only one rule: take a picture every day, but it has required some interpretation nonetheless.) Once I realized after I was in bed that I had forgotten to take a photo; I had however taken a video earlier that day, so I let that count. Two (or maybe three) times I’ve used photos that were taken by others but that I had “commissioned” (i.e., said, “Hey, will you grab my camera and get a shot of x?”). More often than not I put off uploading for a few days. But so far I haven’t flat-out forgotten or failed to take a picture.

I don’t try for an artistic shot every day. Some days are just about documenting what we did. And other days’ photos are either experiments or accidents with lighting or camera settings. And I do try to shake it up a bit—I’m certain that I could take a daily picture of Simon (and/or new baby when he arrives).

I’m liking the challenge and the rhythm and discipline of doing something creative every day. And there are a few shots that (for various reasons) I really love. So although I’m certainly not proud of each individual shot, I do enjoy how the Flickr set is shaping up. I, of course, hope (and plan) to finish the next 265 days as well—as long as it keeps being fun, that is.