78/365
Last year, more than once, I felt like I didn’t have space and time for creativity. Kim, my girlfriend, gave me an (almost) empty book as a new year’s present. The book contains 365 pages with a keyword on each day and space for a photo. The challenge that came with it, is to photograph each day. The process is challenging, easy, frustrating, insightful, exhausting and interesting. Therefor I wanted to share some of my experiences with this project.
SHOOTING EVERY DAY
For many years I’ve been carrying a camera with me almost all the time and I’ve done a couple of 50/50 projects as well. So I’m no stranger to shooting every day life. However I always vowed never to do a 365-project (meaning shooting every day for a whole year) for fear that pushing yourself to shoot every day for so long might kill off the pleasure of photography. And I admit that there are days, and even stretches of days, that I don’t feel like picking up a camera.
The secret to days like that is to be kind to yourself. I’ve learned to accept that a quick snap with my phone is just fine. Some days are just not very interesting, I might be tired or simply don’t feel like picking up a camera. That’s ok! It’s a slow process to let go of the pressure, accept failure and just be grateful for the days that I do get a nice picture. That attitude is a radical departure of what I stand for as a professional photographer: being able to come up with results whatever the cosmos throws at me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great attitude if you want to work for clients. But that also requires you to often play it safe and fall back onto your bag of techniques and tricks. Growth however, only happens when you are prepared to fall flat on your face.
GEAR
When I started this project, I immediately started thinking about which camera and lens would be the perfect choice. The answer is: any camera or lens that I fancy of I happen to have with me at that particular moment. I’ve been shooting on the X-H2, X-H2s, X-Pro3, even the GFX-50R and my phone. But the one I’m using for the bulk of the pictures is the X100V. I’ve really come to re-appreciate this little marvel. And I’ve been playing around with the converter lenses and other accessories to changes things up a little.
My advice to you is to use whatever you have and not be too dogmatic about what camera and lens you use. Sometimes all it takes to keep the passion going is to get an old camera out of the cupboard, pick a crazy lens that’s not suited to capture everyday life or, if you can, give yourself a little present and buy a new filter or some other gizmo that you don’t really NEED but LIKE.
THE RESULTS
I’m 78 days removed from the first pictures in this project. That’s not enough to see their value or lack thereof. But it’s enough distance to see that the process will eventually lead somewhere. I don’t know exactly where this will take me, but it will take me somewhere and I will have learned something along the way. Even if that is just what a can NOT do.
When I do a portrait shoot or document and exotic trip, I can get excited by watching the pictures on the back of the camera. I rarely get that with these everyday life pictures. In fact, I often get frustrated and discouraged when I download my daily harvest into Lightroom. But I guess time is the best editor for this kind of work. And maybe these pictures are not supposed to be seen as separate works, but as a body of work. Maybe, these pictures are not even supposed to be shared, just taken.
Anyway, here are 78 pictures from the 78 first days of this project:
I’m interested to hear what you think about such a project. Do you have any questions? Would you like me to write another update in a couple of weeks/months?
By the way, today’s keyword was FLASH, and this is what I came up with ;-)
