January Retrospective
Scrivener January 31st, 2007
I had been mulling over a post about this whole 365 project for the last few days, but when I had a chance to get online earlier today and saw Billie’s retrospective, then I knew I needed to go ahead and write something like this too. (I see that I’m not the only one who felt inspired by Billie’s post.)
My experience with 365 has been colored by the four months I spent taking a self-portrait every day when I took part in the Whisekerino a year ago. Whiskerino was a profound experience for me for a number of reasons: taking that picture each day really pushed me to become a better photographer; looking at the daily self-portraits of 133 other guys–most of whom were photographers, painters, designers, or generally just super damn creative–gave me some sense of both the possibilities available and of my own limitations as a photographer; and the fact that it was a community of men was itself really important to me, too, for reasons that I haven’t managed to articulate particularly well for myself even yet. Probably the thing that I most appreciated about the Whiskerino, though, and that I’ve been missing since last February, was that it pushed me to explore my playful, creative side and to move through my days on the lookout for interesting moments.
When I look over the 31 pictures I’ve taken during this first month of Project 365, I don’t really see much in the way of theme or particular aesthetic, other than that I like to take pictures of Ella and Chloe, but then that’s not exactly news to anyone who’s read my blog or looked at my Flickr stream at any point in the last two years. Instead, what I see when I look at these photos, what I have felt these last few weeks, has been an increased sense of the beauty in the world around me. And I’ve really enjoyed this new subdivision of the blogging community that’s sprung up with this 2007 Project 365. I can already see ways in which they are pushing me to take better, more interesting photos.
View all the posts in January.
I love this!