12/31/12
How can it be OVER? It feels surreal. One year has come and gone. Appropriately, I am sitting in the very same kitchen chair in my parents' house as I was when I started this venture with picture #1 taken shortly after midnight on 1/1/11. The same red table cloth adorns the table now as it did then. Yet, it's hard to imagine everything that's passed. All the trips I've taken, the birthdays celebrated, and the quiet moments at home with those closest to me. I think that I have captured them here. Ultimately, that was the goal.
We take our cameras out for all of the exciting vacations and celebrations but we don't always document the day to day. Perhaps that is because we feel like now, when we're young, our memories won't fail us. But some day, I'm confident that I will look back on this blog and be thankful that I took the time to snap a photo each day.
It also offered an opportunity for me to develop a creative outlet. In many ways, I'm afraid that stopping tomorrow on 1/1/12 will mean that I feel like there's a gaping hole in my day. The pressure to think of and post a new photo each day is a double-edged sword. It pushed me to think outside of the box, even when I felt like I couldn't do so. But it also dragged me out of bed at 11:30pm many-a-night when I reluctantly realized that I had forgotten to post or take a photo.
Perhaps most surprisingly to me, this blog inspired another friend of mine to take on the same task in 2012. What with it being a leap year, he'll post 366 photos in 2012, starting tomorrow. So perhaps I can relax and live a bit vicariously through him for a while. I am also thinking of starting a separate blog, to post photos frequently, though not daily. And like this last post, #365, I am thinking that I will post sets of photos, all of which are linked in some way. I'll update this blog with the link to the other when and if I decide to pursue that.
All in all, I'd say that this has been a great, eye-opening experience for me. I hope that you enjoy the photos!
10/11/11
In one month, I will be 27. Where are the years going? I was just talking to my mom last night about the images I can still shut my eyes and see from when I was between a year and two years old. And yet, that was about 25 years ago (...if I'm lucky, a quarter of my life).
Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right things. We only have one life to live, and can't replay the years that go by. Should I even be thinking this way over a quarter of the way through?
I have to go back - and it's like a prison sentence. It's weighing on me like bags of sand tied around my neck. I trudge through my days, frittering away what little time I have left, trying not to think about it - but it's always there. And deep down, I don't know if I'm a strong enough person to do anything, to take any possible route of action right now. Only, I also know where inaction leads... and I don't like it.
It's amazing that at 27 I can feel simultaneous drifting and trapped at the same time, simultaneously uncertain and locked in. Life is so short. And yet, when you're living it... when you're 27, it's easy to feel like you have forever, like you have the luxury of inaction. And maybe that's a bad thing.
You can keep taking pictures - documenting the days. But you can't slow it down, and you can't go back.
9/7/11
More than 2/3 of the way through the year... and sometimes I feel like I'm losing it. Maybe it's the rush of the end of summer, as the days start growing shorter, we lose the nice weather, and our obligations grow. I feel like I barely have a moment to snap a picture anymore. I've been keeping up with taking them each day, even when I have been able to post on time. But it's been a real struggle these days. 250 pictures... I never thought that I would come that far. I do feel like it's time for some fresh material, so I may revisit a list of "ideas" that a friend sent me a while ago, try to reinvigorate the process. But some days, a rather uninspired picture of a headache sums up my day just perfectly. And that was one of my goals too... not only to take pretty pictures but capture the smaller moments in my life. I think that even my renewed lack of free time is being captured here.
7/19/11
Another "landmark" day - #200. Only 165 days left to keep up all this fun! And I'm lucky enough to be on a different continent for 23 more days, documenting my time here. Definitely a milestone. Picture-taking has become an inherent part of my day by now. It would feel weird to not think about taking pictures of things in my daily life. In fact, I do think I will miss this when the year is over. God only knows how many pictures this has really generated. It's way more than actually make it onto the blog, that's for sure. Anyway, thanks for sharing the experience!
7/1/11
We are half way through the year, folks! So hard to believe that I have lasted this long! And yet somehow I have built the daily picture into my routine. Tonight was a sad night. Today's picture alludes to the fact that I am leaving the love of my life for 6 weeks. I am not this strong of a person, but it seems that I have gotten myself into this mess and so I will have to deal with it until I am out. He means the world to me, and I am already counting the days until we're together again (41 starting tomorrow). If I just keep counting, I'll just keep whittling away at them until we're back in each others' arms...
6/21/11
I had to share the following photos, made with a free panorama assistant called Hugin. They aren't from today but rather from the last few weeks. The first is from our last minute trip to DC for a visa. We tacked on a trip to Baltimore's Orioles' Park at Camden Yards. Pretty cool!
Here's another, also not from today, but from our trip to Kure Beach, NC last week. This is our favorite beach here. From the vantage point of a beach chair... ahhhh...
5/21/11
Sometimes I'm thoroughly impressed by the way mankind has invaded nature. Several walks that we have taken through the woods down here in North Carolina have shown definite signs of man's involvement among nature's designs (remember back to #72 - Pipeline, and check out today's #141 - High Voltage). I guess it just proves how big our "footprint" really is... it's bigger than our house, where we drive our cars. We often transport the things we need right through the middle of nowhere. Today's walk got me thinking about nature and mankind's interventions in it.
5/4/11
I've found proof... My entire life, I have been a photographer of unwilling subjects. The very closest to me peered out with anger, scorn, frustration, resentment, exasperation!!! Another picture?!? Such bright flashes?!? Leave me be!!! And still I never listened... I never stopped snapping pictures. It seems I owe a big note of gratitude to these people, who despite being harassed at the end of my lens still talk to me and love me to this day. Where would I be without you all?
4/10/11
Today makes 100 posts, a milestone for sure. I'm not going to say this has been easy, or that every picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps I've settled into a routine of taking uninspired shots on average with a few out of the ordinary sprinkled in. But still, I feel that I am capturing my year in pictures and that is really what I set out to do.
It's hard to believe that we're 100 days into the year already. This time of year flies, partially because of "that time" of the semester and partially because it's spring! It's easy to lose track of things in the rush to summer, but these pictures remind me it's important to take five minutes a day to slow down and consider my frame.
I remember when I was little, walking down my street to and from the bus to kindergarten. I remember looking at the leaves turning colors in the fall and drifting down the from the branches through the afternoon sunlight to lay at my feet. I remember walking home from high school too, but I do not have any vivid pictures or moments that stand out in my mind. Instead, I have this feeling that I never really looked at anything. I never focused on the pictures before my eyes. Somewhere along the line that stopped - lost in the rush of daily life.
This project has brought a piece of that back for me. It's showed me that I'm still capable of taking notice of the tiny moments around me. For that, I'm grateful that I continue to snap a shot (even the most inartistic ones) each day.
2/25/11
Today I noticed how quickly the sky can change. It's been a weird day weather-wise: 71°F, rain in the morning, sun by 10:00am, threatening early afternoon, sun again by 2:15pm. In my quest for the perfect photo this afternoon, I captured one of the fastest weather transitions I've ever seen. See for yourself:
1:49:17 PM
2:20:29 PM
2/9/11
A little over a month and forty photos in and I already have some observations about this process. My first thought is that the biggest thing holding me back is not a lack of ideas as I'd originally feared, but rather an overwhelming feeling of self-consciousness. I am reluctant to share the web address of my blog with people and, in fact, have only done so with a select few. Moreover, as I walk across campus most mornings and evenings, I am constantly viewing the world in snapshots now. But I walk by many "perfect shots" because they are simply in too public of a place. I don't know why exactly I care, but I feel like I blatantly lack talent and would look silly to people, trying to capture the perfect angle with my blue point-and-shoot.
Today, I had this feeling several times walking across campus to an appointment with my advisor - which, by the way, is why today's photo is entitled "A Quiet Place." I took this photo on the way, in the one spot without people. When I reached the steps of my advisor's building, I came upon an undergrad standing in the sun, facing the main quad, rapping into a cell phone - loudly. He went on and on about "chuckin' up deuces" in what was clearly spontaneous improvisation. And it was at that moment that I wondered what was wrong with me that I couldn't pause quietly to take a photo in a crowd. Here he was loudly bearing his creativity to the world; meanwhile I hide mine!
I think I know why - unfortunately, it's part of the reason I started this to begin with, and maybe it will get better with time. It's just not very "academic" to spend your time doing things like this. Academics run marathons... they participate in the kind of masochistic physical activity that mimics our masochistic professional lives. They don't pause on campus to appreciate the way the sunlight filters through the leaves of a tree. When they walk across campus, they think about variables, statistical relationships, the paper they need to send out for publication, grant deadlines... This is what I was fighting in myself. It's so easy to fall into the mold of the social scientist and lose all non-scientific creativity. Don't get me wrong - deep down, I'd still like to push myself by upping the number of miles I can run... and I want to do good research and publish and everything else that being an academic implies. But I have always been a creative person and I am not ready to let that side of me die.
Maybe I'll start posting pictures of people... eventually. We'll see.
