Almost a year ago I read about local photographer Rosalee Roy‘s Photo 365 project over at the Unknown Photographer’s site. It inspired me to take part in my own project, and on January first, I embarked on my own photographic journey into 365 days of consecutive photographs.

I set out a few rules for myself. The image had to be taken on that day, but not posted on that day. I downloaded the Photo 365 iPhone app to help out a bit, and used it to post to both my twitter and Flickr pages. I could use either the iPhone or my DSLR to take the pictures, but they had to be posted through the Photo 365 app (it was, as they say, the Repository of Truth).

Most of the purpose of the exercise, for me anyway, was not so much to produce amazing images, but to get the creative juices flowing on a daily basis. Even if the end result was a fairly “meh” (and there were many), if it got me thinking “how can I make this situation creative”, then it was successful.

There was a lot of repetition… a lot. Many pictures of lunch, a latte, and the same purple flower were taken. I definitely found that I got in a rut (or two, or ten) with some of the photographic subjects, and on more than one day I’d find it’d be 5pm, no pictures taken at all, and I’d just take a shot of the cat on my lap and apply a filter of some sort and call it a day.

I’m happy to say that I only “missed” one day, but I did have my Everday picture-a-day iPhone app shot, so I called that still a “legal” shot. Interestingly that was almost exactly mid-way through the year, the July 1st shot.

There are a lot of different ways you can see your own Photo365 project. I’ve heard photographers say that it’s not good to “force” yourself to shoot if you’re not in the mood, as you might end up starting to hate your camera, as it’s forcing you to do something you don’t want to do every day. Other people say that shooting everyday increases your creativity. I say if you’re a photographer or artist of any sort, and interested in increasing your creativity, it’s definitely something to do for one year. If every day, you do what you want to get better at, be it taking a picture, writing a song, painting, writing a program, or creating a new website, as long as you establish “rules” and stand by them, it’s definitely a exercise worth taking on.

Just for fun I’ve set a gallery below of all the images from my project, tagged so they’re sortable by the subject of the day. Very interesting to see how things matched up day by day.  You can visit it by going to my Photo 365 2012 Project page.  A bit more of a sample of the images are at the bottom of this post.

So what’s up next? I don’t know if I’ll continue on with a Photo 365 project next year, I really don’t. I admit that it will feel very very weird to not have that little beep from my phone every day at 4pm reminding me to take a picture. I’m thinking perhaps a portrait-a-week project next. I’ve been concentrating on portraiture lately, and a Portrait52 project might be right up the right alley.

Please take a few minutes and browse the full Photo 365 Project page here (I took a long time getting it to work as well as it does!) 🙂