Have you ever thought about documenting your life for a whole year?
I’ve done it.
I took a photo every day, starting on my birthday in November 2019 and finishing one year later. And what I’ve realised is that my boring, ordinary life is the most amazing thing ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been grateful for the opportunities I had and the chances I got to take. But looking at these photos makes me appreciate every day I’ve lived through in the past 12 months – even the dull/sad/scary/frustrating ones. And belive me, I can hear how cheesy that sounds!
This year has not been more eventful than others – if anything, less exciting things happened and I stayed home a lot more (due to obvious reasons). I honestly think, I could not have picked a better year to document everything!
This is what my past year looked like…
It was my birthday last week. Yay me. Except I’m not a fan of celebrating my birthday – I don’t like being the centre of attention. And getting older and all that.
Anyway, the day before my birthday marked day 366 of taking at least one photo every day without missing a single one. That’s quite an achievement – I’m a bit of a perfectionist and when I started this project 365 (which in leap year 2020 turned into project 366), I had the ambition to not just take any photo but use one of my Fuji cameras for the project. Every single day. That means shooting RAW files and editing photos daily.
It sounds like a massive task but the more you do a certain thing, the easier it gets. Quicker too. We all know that… So even when I went away with my friends for a week in summer, I still kept the daily editing up, despite taking lots more photos than during any ordinary day back home.
During this task, amazing things happened in my brain. I started finding photo opportunities in my everyday life that I would have never noticed before. The way my street looks when I come home from a day away, the way the light hits my wall through the window, the raindrops on the window on a rainy day, the way my plants grow (or die because I’m a terrible plant mum). Meaningful photos didn’t have to show off my amazing life or even my camera skills, they only had to be a part of what I experienced. Because in the end, nobody had to approve of any of my work. That’s the best thing about any personal project – if you do it purely for yourself, no outside comment really matters.
