sweet like sugar

the 365 project, she is finished. let me tell you, I am really missing it. not that I need a reason to take photographs on the daily. um, maybe I do. this project had me lugging my camera with me absolutely everywhere I went, every single day until it became as much a part of me as my own two eyes. attached itself to the fabric of my day in ways I am now unable (and unwilling) to undo. which was sort of the point, I guess. that and all that comes with the process of self-documentation. plus, I just really wanted to see if I could do it.

I couldn't have asked for a more interesting year to document. cross country travels and a move to a brand new city in a brand new part of the country. inevitably, some days were easier than others. some days found me shooting everything in sight while others seemed to have nothing to offer. early on in the process, certain questions emerged: was it about the best photograph of the day? or the photograph that best documented what happened on that particular day? I refused to define this aspect of the project and so it vacillated somewhere in between. sometimes I favored the quieter, more unexpected shots over the ones that screamed the major events of the day. okay, and sometimes I didn't. which is what made the project more like something I couldn't wait to get to everyday and less like the tedious chore I thought it might turn out to be. I couldn't wait to see what story the day would end up telling, even if it was just about little red tomatoes spilling out over the counter.

it's a fascinating thing, looking at my year from beginning to end. more so to see how I changed as a photographer. what subjects, what angles I favored, what came easy, what didn't. one year later and I am as hungry as I was in the beginning. simply put, I want more. I want to know more, see more, do more. and this I know for sure: I work best when there's a specific task at hand. but then, I have always known this. I am a girl who needs an assignment.

and so now I am a girl without an assignment. and I'm feeling a little lost, slightly unnerved. since the end of january, I have been scrawling out the possibilities of new projects on tiny scraps of paper. I'm anxious to get started, I'm feeling ridiculously ansy. oh, the end is sweet and all, but the beginning of a new project is where I want to be. nothing tastes sweeter than the beginning of the beginning.

(my entire 365 set is here)

try, try again

my camera is alive again-- miraculously brought back from the land of dead cameras.



which means that my 365 project is up and running again.



one thing I really enjoy about this experiment: finding that one piece of something in my day worth photographing.



I mean, there's a lot in my day worth seeing. so much worth photographing, but there always seems to be that one thing. and always something I might've overlooked had my eyes not been wide open in this way.

(I'm two weeks into it-- checkit, the set here)

ten days

(day two)

the day after my 36th birthday, I began to (purposefully) take a photograph each day.


(day three)

I already seem to be shooting all the time, but somehow this felt different. in the sense that I was setting out to do something I'd never done before, something that felt huge to me. no matter what kind of day I was having, there was always this thing I was doing.


(day four)

and then, just when I was really starting to find the joy in it, when I was really getting into the habit of the everydayness of it, just when the set was beginning to take on some sort of interesting shape, my camera broke.


(day 8)

really, I shouldn't have been so easily thrown. but there I was, all thrown. as if the project would be immune to any sort of hiccups along the way.


(day 9)

I do have the grandest of plans to pick right up where I left off the moment a new camera is in my hands, but until then-- these ten days of photographs will have to do.

(more of my humble beginnings can be found here)