365 | 365

On January 1, 2013, I set out to shoot every Our Daily Challenge group topic for the year. Our Daily Challenge is a Flickr group where a topic gets posted everyday, and the group members respond with a photo. I've been participating in the group for three years, but I never tried to shoot every topic for the year. I also never tried to do a 365 project or a photo a day project. A 365 project is kind of an equivalent to a marathon for photographers. Many try, but few succeed.

Since there is no way I'd be able to shoot everyday, I allowed myself up to when the topic expired to post a photo (One week). Unfortunately, I spent most of the year a week behind, so I ended up taking a photo almost daily anyway.

There were many, many times that I wanted to quit. I spent way too much time in front of the computer editing and posting photos. I often felt like I did nothing in my free time but photography. Lauren will be the first one to tell you that all I do is photography (In between working full time, volunteering, keeping house, cooking, raising her, etc.).

 



In exchange for those sacrifices, I've made so many photos that I'm proud to call mine - photos that never would have been born if it wasn't for this project. One of my goals in doing this was to grow my commercial photography portfolio, and around 200 photos that were either shot as a topic because of the topic were invited into the Getty Flickr collection.






While I will not be doing another 365 project in 2014, I will be doing a 52 weeks project which I hope to post here. I'll also be reacquainting myself with my other neglected hobbies. In fact, I plan on taking up sketchbook journaling, and if I don't stink too badly at it, maybe I'll share my work here as well.

Many thanks go out to Mark and Lauren for their help and patience this year. I hope they can someday forgive me for my insanity.

Here's a slideshow of all the photos that were part of the project (I only wish you could see the corresponding topic):


Created with flickr slideshow.

You can also browse them here.

Otherwise, bring on year seven of the Ross Family Equation! :)