September 25, 2009

    I am beginning project 365 as a personal project to increase my technical photographic skill as well as to challenge my creative composition skill. The project’s objective is to be a complete body of work of 365 days of photographic effort. Due to the nature of the project the creativity aspect will wax and wane throughout the run of the project, but technical proficiency should remain constant.

    Executing a project like this encourages continuous interaction with the camera, making its controls an extension of the functionality of the photographer’s optical system. It is also a way for the photographer to work with more advanced techniques that go far beyond the snapshot. Additionally, the project encourages the camera to be with the photographer a larger percentage of the time, making chance photographs of events in action a lot more likely, bringing a bit of the unexpected into the body of the project.

    The goal of the project is a bit undefined at the beginning. The vague description of being a “complete body of work of 365 days of photographic effort” does not give a lot of detail as to what is being covered. The vagueness is intentional, as it is not possible to predict the route that photography will take over such a long period of time, however, it is expected that towards the conclusion of the project there will be more consistent themes and an overall understanding of what is important, or at least aesthetically significant in the photographer’s life. This exercise is as close to an autobiography as can be constructed in a visual work. The freeform nature of the project ensures that property, even if the photographer tries to escape that trait.

    Experimentation is a large part of where the advanced techniques are developed. This project is not expected to be a stand-alone portfolio of the photographer’s work. It is a less than polished collection of photographs that are to represent growth and potential. The project will contain successes and failures both technically and compositionally as the photographer advances in skill. In my execution of the project I will endeavor to attempt anything that grabs me, and then work on it. I will place my best failed attempts in the project body, and then if I later have a success, I will place it in the project as well. The motivating factor for all of this experimentation is boredom, it is not possible to have enough ideas and objects immediately available to make 365 days of interesting photographs without experimentation.

    The project will conclude after 365 days, but the skills learned should outlive the project by a lifetime, and while not a portfolio itself, the body of the project should contain more than enough examples of fine quality work to begin a portfolio.