The 365 Project of 2010

Here are my personal favorites from my 365 project of 2010. Go to the bottom of the document for some background information and general comments. The 365 project can also be viewed in its entirety on Flickr.

January 22

Cheese doodles on the closed lid of a laptop computer is one hell of a white-trash still life, but I like the warm colors of the yellow-orange and deep red, especially the faint reflection.

January 25

Yes, I did shoot a lot of cat pictures for the Project, and it was only natural that the lens tended to gravitate towards Krycek. This was on his second evening with us, and he was still a little camera-shy.

January 31

It seems kind of pointless to shoot pictures of toys, but I was so impressed by the end result. This is only lit by flash, bounced off an off-white curtain, which gives the shot an almost ominous mood. My first association is something from the second half of Episode III of Star Wars.

February 20

I was amazed this Saturday morning when I looked out onto the balcony to inspect the results of the previous night's snowfall. It turned out that the snow had completely covered the table on our balcony—except for three places where the snow had fallen through the gaps in the tabletop and created this face. I immediately went of on a riff that I was being surveilled by monsters, and sure enough, if you check all 365 pictures, there are two more of them: the House Monster and the Rubber Band Monster. Other than my wife and my cat, my only ally in the fight against the forces of evil was Mr. Happy Coffee Guy.

February 24

My Isaac Asimov paperback collection at f/1.8.

March 8

This was one of the triumphs of the 365 project. The constant challenge meant that I was thinking about shots most of the time, and thus I was always ready to draw out the camera. This reflection in a gigantic puddle of molten snow would not have occurred to me to photograph were it not for the Project.

March 22

My other favorite picture of Krycek, illustrating the frequently mentioned photographic issue of timing. And sharpness, in more than one sense.

March 27

At several points during the Project, as well as a few times after its conclusion, I've toyed with the idea of putting together a 365-page photo book, or some sort of a printed record of my experiences. This is the cover photo. It says "Greetings from Gothenburg" like no other photograph I've been able to make. It sums up what this town is about: public transportation and rain.

April 19

I am grateful I set aside the few seconds needed to capture this picture of dawn over Sannegårdshamnen before I had to catch the bus. But I deeply regretted that I couldn't just skip work, pull up a lounge chair and watch the spectacle unfold in all its serenity.

April 20

I am a bit self-conscious about the Lego stuff on here, mainly because it feels like I'm stealing somebody else's riffs. But I searched like a madman, and couldn't find anyone who had done a Band of Brothers tribute, so I did one myself. I even got started on a Saving Private Ryan tribute, but, to use a Hollywood term, it has got stuck in development hell.

May 2

I often accuse myself of not having a particular style of photography, no niche, no specialty. And at the end of the day, I have six fantastic pieces of art that just beg to be photographed from every angle and in every light possible.

May 13

Point taken (see previous picture). Believe it or not, this is a full color photograph with no manipulation save contrast and sharpness. The Stratocaster is custard yellow, but somehow the abundance of light falling in through the lens was too much for the sensor.

May 22

There are no muffins like my wife's carrot muffins with cream cheese frosting.

May 23

It didn't take a week until those poles were ripped out and they've been missing ever since.

June 16

A study of the knurling on the controls of my wife's Jazz Bass.

June 20

This is the quintessential Swedish midsummer picture, discounting the obvious girls with flower garlands. What the picture doesn't say was how swelteringly hot it was outside, nor how loud the ensuing thunderstorm was.

July 15

Shades of shades? Evening light is almost cheating. Anything looks good in the warm light and the oblique sun angle makes for interesting shadows. It can also create that interesting 3D look where the subject seems to pop out of the photo. Not here, though.

August 4

Stairway to... Someone get me a ladder! The musical connotations keep coming up, since this is an emergency ladder on the outside of the house where we have our rehearsal space.

August 28

My Erin relaxing with a cup of cafe au lait. If I'm not mistaken, this was her Facebook picture for quite some time.

September 3

View through the broken stained glass at the Bishop's Arms by Järntorget. Interestingly enough, we were talking about photography, and I said something to Erin who was sitting to my left, and I saw this in the corner of my eye. Serendipity?

September 9

My macro era was inaugurated by thoroughly documenting my musical equipment. This is a closeup of a pack of Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings, together with a string winder (yellow) and a pair of clippers (red). I think the colors are neat.

September 17

This photograph never fails to make me thirsty. I used to be really into Scotch malt whisky, but over the years I got tired of it and completely lost interest. However, whisky purists claim with utter certainty that I prefer Jack Daniel's just because I am a rock 'n' roll guitar player. I beg to differ. I can't stand the snobbery anymore.

October 2

Autumn came in early October and this leaf fell on my father's car. I caught it on virtual film as we were getting ready to leave a bison farm near my uncle's house in Hjo.

October 4

I am fascinated by cloud patterns and the colors of sunrise and sunset, and I was glad I arrived in town early this morning, so I could immortalize it.

October 7

I spent about 30 minutes looking for stuff to shoot while waiting for my wife to get out of work on this afternoon. There is always lots of hustle and bustle between the train station and the big indoor shopping center, and I finally found the shot just before I was ready to give up.

December 23

Afternoon tea at Brasserie Max at the Seven Dials, London, celebrating my aunt's 50th birthday and my wife's 28th. This is just the top tier of three, and there were two trays in total. (That was a tongue twister!) I was so full I was going to burst, and no one in the company wanted to get dinner that evening.

December 24

Plate-glass skylight at the Tottenham—the only pub on Oxford Street.

The 365 Project

A 365 project is a creative project where you take on the challenge of shooting at least one picture a day for a year. Anyone with any type of camera can do it, and you don't have to start on a certain day of the year. It can be any type of photograph, you can mix and match as you like, and present it in any form you desire, so long as you make that daily shot.

My 365 days

My enthusiasm for photography was at its strongest for about two years around 2007. Thereafter it declined steadily, and there were very few pictures taken in '09. But since I had amassed all this gear, and deep inside I knew that it is always more fun to go out and look for shots than to lie around on the couch, reading about photography, I decided to make it my New Year's resolution to embark upon my very own 365 project in 2010.

Maybe I expected too much of it. Maybe I was too easily impressed by people who wrote that it had changed their lives. What happened was that I forgot that I actually know myself fairly well. As soon as demands are placed upon me, be it internal or external, it is like sealing my flask of inspiration and throwing it in the river. The only thing the 365 Project proved to me was something that I observed after a mere week or two: photographic inspiration is not attained by filling out an order form, or even through hard work. It just appears.

The photo gallery speaks for itself in this regard. On some days, I was almost forced to roll a die to choose the Picture of the Day since I had amassed ten promising candidates. On others, I was so sick of it all that my subjects were defined by whatever my telephoto lens could reach from my couchridden position. The majority of the pictures are bad. Some of them are spectacularly appalling.

But.

You also have to keep your pretentions in check. Photography is not just an art form, it is also entertainment and a way of documenting your reality. Even though it was unrealistic to expect that I would achieve 365 objects d'art, the fact remains that it was a fascinating to document a year in my life. The purpose of the project isn't the creation of great art, but to jumpstart your imagination. If you put it in that perspective, my entire experience of the 2010 project changes. Suddenly, I come to the realization that there are some fun shots that I would never have made had I not had the self-imposed challenge constantly gnawing in the back of my mind. If I think long and hard about it, there is probably more than a picture or two that I took in spite of a complete lack of inspiration.

I also have to come clean. I didn't wind up with 365 images, but 364. On December 22, the Project slipped my mind completely. During the preceding days, we were bombarded with dark headlines about a snowed-in Heathrow Airport and thousands of Swedes who were stuck in London. As late as by lunchtime on the 22nd, we didn't even know if we were going to make it. We were tossed between hope and despair, I had all but set my heart on cancelling the trip and tackling my way through the throngs of fellow last-minute Christmas shoppers. And then the turnaround: against all odds, the trip was on and neither Erin nor I had prepared a single thing. All that afternoon and evening was spent packing and setting the apartment straight, and even though I checked, packed, re-checked and re-packed my camera bag, the picture of the day managed to slip my mind completely.

There are no official rules as far as 365 projects go, but if there were, they would very likely stipulate that if you miss a shot, on the very next day, you start over on Day 1. (By that point in my Project, such a rule would undoubtedly have led to "Oopsydaisy, that was my Nikon going over the balcony rail!") But I'm glad I blew it on day 356 and not day 19, because in the latter case I'm positive that this entire project would have been derailed before it got off the ground.

Niklas Andreasson dot se