On June 1st, 2010, I took this picture, starting my first “photo a day” project.
Yesterday, I finished a year of photos with this one:
In between, I missed eight photos, mostly because I forgot, and once because I lost the photo. I took lots of after-dark, at-home photos because I only remembered I needed a photo at the end of the day. There are many photos of Gabe, flowers, trees, and inanimate objects, but I like looking over the entire set on Flickr and seeing my year: my fifth anniversary with Gabe, visits from friends, returning to New Orleans, autumn leaves, driving from Houston to Louisville with my mom, moving into a new apartment, gross snow, a cluster of strangers’ faces, and then flowers again.
A bouquet picked by my mom to accompany us on our drive
A note on the Strangers project — I didn’t succeed in photographing someone new for 30 days in a row, and I lost the 30th photo. I didn’t get bolder in approaching people. But I did learn some things, like:
-most people are open to having their photograph taken by a stranger (although I’m aware that this might not be so were I a different race, gender, or age)
-hair feathers are a thing (Kelly)
- better laundry etiquette from Patricia. I’ve adopted her practice of neatly arranging other people’s laundry when I take it out of a machine or dryer that I want to use. I was previously guilty of leaving it in a pile, which I suspect is what most people do.
Even though I didn’t quite achieve the goal I set for myself with the Strangers project, I want to get back to it. I like talking to people — it makes me nervous, but it’s a good exercise. Karen Walrond, awesome woman and author of The Beauty of Different, has a 1000 Faces project (her whole site is marvelous — I just got totally sidetracked poking around on it, again) as part of her life list. 1000 is a big number, and her ambition, not mine. I think I’ll go for 100 strangers and see how I feel after that.
I like that I started a photo-a-day project mid-year instead of January 1st. We tend to reflect more at the New Year as the calendar changes, and this has forced me to reflect on a year at a different time. That said, I think I will start the project again on January 1st, 2012. I welcome a break from the pressure of taking a photo every day, but that doesn’t mean I’ll leave the house without the camera.
