How to Start and Complete a 365 Project – Part 1

Do you carry your camera every day?  Do you take photos every day?  “Yes” was my answer to both of the questions in 2009.  On January 1, 2009, I started my own 365 project; for those of you that don’t know the 365 project, you take a photo a day (thought next year in light of the leap year it will be a 366 project), then upload and share it on the Internet.  You can shoot anything: self-portraits, skyscapes, landscapes, seascapes, still life subjects, food photography, or wherever your interest take you.  You can stick to one theme for the entire year and build your skill in that arena or you can shoot variety of things you encounter in your daily life.

On January 1st,  2009, I started shooting and sharing a photo every day.  The theme I chose was “My Tokyo.”  I wanted to share with my audience what I saw in my daily life. I don’t remember why I started the project now, but it may have been because I wanted to try something new with a newly purchased point-and-shoot camera or  I may have gotten inspiration from people who had been engaged in their own 365’s at the time.

Did I finish my project successfully?  Yes, at the end of the year I had taken and shared a photograph each and every day.  I kept shooting what I saw around Tokyo, trying to give the people who visited my photo stream on Flickr a virtual tour of my city and my life;  It was really hard.  When I had to work late, I shot a stuffed animal at home before going to bed.  On one stormy night, I had to make do with the bottle caps of Coca Cola for my daily photograph.  Some results were not very creative at all, but I learned something with every single click, regardless of the difficulties I encountered through the year, my 365 project has made what I am as a photographer.

I started the project in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, and ended in the same place.

There were countless reasons I could have given up the project, but I stuck to it.  Why?  I’ll share the reasons for my successful completion of my 365 project here.

I Always Had My Camera in My Bag or Pocket

I used a point-and-shoot cameras for the entire project; either a Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-FX35 or a DMC-LX3.  Everyone suggested to me that I should, “Carry your camera all the time”  to successfully complete the project and there’s no denying that is probably the single greatest suggestion towards my success.  Photo opportunities are everywhere, there may be a nice subject right in front of you right at this moment if you look around.  While the performances of small cameras may not as good as large DSLRs,  I didn’t want to carry a large heavy camera with me all the time because I was not a pro photographer and my goal was not to strengthen my arm muscles and in order to compete in an arm-wrestling match.  My goal was quite simply to take a new photograph each and every day!

Don’t pass interesting subject matter without clicking.

I Didn’t Push Myself Too Hard Artistically, But DID Think All the Time

I always wanted to shoot “wow” photos.  Breathtaking sunsets, flowers with morning dews, etc, etc , but such moment didn’t often come for me.  Except for weekends, the time I was able to spend on photography was limited to before work, at lunchtime, or after work; so I often had to wander around after dark or rummaging through my house trying to find a subject that I wanted to capture.

I was most depressed when I shot this …

Another problem I had to surmount and was the distance from my home to my workplace.  It is approximately 3km and takes only about 15 minutes by bike, such a short distance provides limited subject matter to shoot when you consider taking 365 photographs over the course of a year.  I shot this and that and  this and that, at times it seemed like there was nothing left to shoot halfway through the project.  So I decided to explore angles, distance and everything I could think of with the same subject old matter.  The photos I took didn’t have the “wow” factor,  in fact they may not have been artistic at all, but because of this, I was able to improve my composition skills immensely.

This is the slide I see every day, it’s the only thing that looks interesting on the way to work. I have no idea how many times I took photos in this tiny park.

Crowd-sourcing Support

One of the reasons I shoot photos is that I want to share my take on Tokyo with the people all around the world.  Luckily I had a few on-line friends when I started the project and the more visitors and comments I received, the more motivated I got.  I had a lot of visitors every day, and all of them were looking forward to my updates, or at least so I thought.  Some of my friends were also very vocal in their support, they browsed through my photos from time to time, gave me their feedback and praise.  The viewer feed back was so inspiring for me that the chances of dropping the project became slimmer and slimmer.

This is the photo that was viewed most. I was happy when my efforts paid off.

In order to capture my viewers interest there’s one thing I did when uploading photos on the Internet.  I always added a short passage expressing what I saw, felt, or thought of the photo, however,  I was mindful not to make the passage to long as I didn’t want to bore my viewers.  When I thought the photo was not good enough to encourage people leave comments, I took pains to write something even more enchanting to hook viewers.

Photo Buddies

Some Flickr friends of mine visited Tokyo, and we sometimes went photo-shooting together.  Seeing them taking photos was really inspiring for me, I gained many tips that  that expanded my vision.  Of course I tried to imitate the ways they shot even though they had large DSLRs while my compact camera was as small as a cigarette case.

A friend from Vancouver loved cats. He took cats, and I took them. They are not cats actually, but my camera was not good at capturing real cats :P

Another friend from Austin was really good at capturing night lights, so I tried to do the same thing with my point-and-shoot camera.

If you are ready to start planning your own 365 project and you want to find friends/support on-line, joining the 365 Project website is a good place to start.  There are also many inspiring  groups on Flickr, and daily themes circulating on Google+.  Eric Leslie has lists themes shown here on his website.  Now are you inspired sufficiently to want to start your own 365 project in 2012?  In next month’s article, I’ll write about the things I tried during in 2009 and hopefully give you even more catalyst to embark on your own 365 project.