I Took a Photo Every Day for a Year… Ten Years Ago

Man, time really does fly. Ten whole years since 2016. A lot has changed since then, but this remains one of the most ambitious projects I’ve ever attempted. I decided to write a blog post to mark the anniversary and reflect on it a little. Back when I did it, I didn’t write anything down, I just took the photos. I also thought it might be nice for anybody I’ve met since then who has no idea I even did this. 1

365 is a project where you take a photo every day for a whole year. Pretty simple. There are many ways to approach it. Some people pick a theme for the whole project, some practice their specialty, some use it to work on their weaknesses, some just take random photos of their daily life, and so on. I decided to have a different theme for each month, just so I have something to guide me, and so I wouldn’t get bored.

Why did I do this project? I have no idea. It just seemed like a fun idea.

There is one smart thing I did do. Even before I started, I realized it would be extremely tricky to shoot a photo, edit it, and publish it every single day, and to do all of that at a reasonable hour. So I decided I would always shoot a day in advance and post the photo the next day. This little trick helped me immensely. So, with that little system in place, here’s how the year actually went.

Random January

In January, I decided to ease into the project without any constraints. I was just shooting anything and everything. I ended up with a couple of photos I really like.

Black and White February

A very simple and open-ended theme, but a really good month for me. I have several photos from February that I love. Shooting in black and white is great practice, and it makes you think differently. Suddenly, all you notice is contrast, which is coincidentally one of the most important aspects of photography.

Creative Self-Portraits March

I’ve always loved making silly Photoshop edits, so this month was the perfect excuse to play around with that.

Street Portraits April

This month was meant as a personal challenge rather than a photography one. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a huge introvert. And ten years ago, I was only worse. So approaching random strangers on the street and asking to take their photo was my worst nightmare. The first day I tried it, I stood on the street for two hours trying to work up the courage to approach someone. The whole time, I was making excuses for why I wasn’t doing it: “They’re a couple, it’ll be weird,” “They’re alone, they’ll think I’m a weirdo,” “They don’t look approachable,” “They’re clearly in a hurry”… I did approach a few people in the end, but this month turned out to be too big a challenge for me at the time. It was way too stressful and way too hard. People were mostly nice, they’d either say yes or they wouldn’t, but my social anxiety was through the roof. So after a week of torturing myself, I gave up, and the rest of the photos are completely random, probably some of the worst in the whole challenge. Looking back, I think this failure2 killed the momentum I’d built up over the previous two months. It knocked the wind out of me. There were still some good months after, June especially, but I never got that early eagerness back, and you can feel it slowly creep into the photos toward the end.

Minimalism May

After a difficult April, I chose a much simpler theme. Some might say the simplest. Just kidding, minimalism is actually really hard to get right. To capture something minimal that still grabs your attention.

Street Photo June

Street photos are my comfort zone. If you look at my profiles, you’ll see it’s most of what I shoot. So it’s no surprise I got some photos I really, really like this month. The one I picked for this section is a fun one too, from my favourite adventure, but I’ll save that story for another time. 3

Oldness July

One of the cool things about these themes is how much more of the world you notice, depending on what you focus on. If my theme is old things, I start spotting old things everywhere, and that way, you can discover some amazing stuff. But, somewhere around here is where you can feel me running on fumes.

Colours August

A cool thing about doing this retrospective is that, going through these photos now, some of them bring back so many memories. Like this one, from a beautiful night in Kolašin when we went out to the darkest place we could find, lay down on the ground, and watched a meteor shower.

Symmetry September

Not many great photos this month, I was really losing steam by this point. But sometimes life smiles on you and hands you a perfect gift, like the shot above.

Architecture October

I was in Belgrade for the whole month and didn’t even go out to explore some of the interesting communist and brutalist architecture, so not many great photos here either. The losing-steam thing was probably part of it too.

Street Art November

I just wandered around taking photos of random graffiti. The one above is, unfortunately, still relevant. 4

Retrospective December

Instead of a specific theme for December, I decided to make it a retrospective of the whole year, with three photos for each month, except March and April, which got two each.

Funny thing about this project is that 2016 was a leap year, which means it had 366 days, so my 365 project actually has 366 photos. I did the same thing in my “Goran of all trades” project, which is how this blog came to be – there, I have 53 projects for the 52 weeks of the year.

What did I learn

The first thing I learned is that doing a project like this for a whole year is way too demanding. Which is why I did it again in 2021 with this blog. And I’ve been thinking about another, different whole-year project for the past couple of years now, so don’t be surprised if I do something stupid like this again. But on a serious note, it’s really hard to keep up the enthusiasm and the will to do your best for a whole year. I couldn’t keep it up, and that’s why you can see the quality really fall off in the last couple of months.

I also learned some stuff about myself and my photography. I figured out that street photography is what I enjoy the most, and I found a style I like and still use to this day.

Remember those two hours I spent frozen on the street in April, and how I gave up on the theme after a week? That taught me that I really am an introvert, and that when you challenge yourself, it’s important to pick something that isn’t too big or overwhelming. Yes, you have to step out of your comfort zone to make progress, but you won’t make any progress if you end up completely overwhelmed. 5

The biggest lesson kinda cancels itself out: don’t quit, but also know when to quit. I learned I can push through stuff that’s really hard for me, and that when I set a goal, my word means something. Even on the craziest days, I’d find a way to do the project, even if it was just the bare minimum. And I think the bare minimum is underrated. Sure, sometimes it’s just an excuse, and it can be a huge problem, but sometimes it’s the only thing keeping you from quitting. You might not get the quality, but you keep the momentum, and the quality catches up later.

I’ll even admit how far I took it. A day or two that year, I didn’t actually shoot anything, so I just posted an old photo I had lying around, which means I technically failed the whole point of the project.6 I don’t even remember which ones anymore, but I’m pretty sure it happened. There was also a day I couldn’t post at all because I had no internet, but that was during the June adventure, so I’ll give myself a pass on that one. 7 The point is, faced with missing a single day, I’d rather quietly cheat than break the streak, which I’m not proud of. 8

And that is the part I’m slower to admit – sometimes you should let it break. Or at least take a break. Cause the flip side of never quitting is burnout, and there were definitely moments that year where I should’ve stepped back and just didn’t. In a way, I’m kinda glad I powered through: it means the whole thing sits there now, nice and clean, 366 days, and 366 photos. But that clean ending really wasn’t great for my mental health. So honestly, I don’t know which lesson wins. Maybe the real one is just learning to tell the difference between a day you should push through and a day you should let yourself off the hook. I’m still not great at it.

I really like bookends, so I planned this one from the very first day. The first and last photos of the project mirror each other: I started 2016 at the Belgrade New Year’s Tango Marathon and ended it in the same place. Both photos are of the marathon bracelets. A full circle. 9

But here’s the thing I keep coming back to. I finished it. The back half is rough, plenty of those photos are forgettable, and I clearly ran out of steam. But the project is done, all 366 days of it. And I’m genuinely proud of that. A finished thing that’s a bit of a mess beats a perfect thing that never got made, every single time. Because somewhere in those 366 photos are a handful I truly love, and not one of them would exist if I’d given up in the rough patch.

If you want to see them, the whole album is on Facebook and Flickr, I called it Full circle and a bit more – a full circle is 360 degrees, and this project came out to a little more than 365 photos.10

Full circle, and a bit more.