A photograph for every day – a busman’s holiday?

I read quite a lot of different photography blogs – not only to keep informed of what’s happening in the professional photography market, but also to pick up on interesting stories. This one, as featured on the Chase Jarvis blog a while back, really tugged at my heart strings. It was centred around the story of New York photographer Jamie Livingston, who took a Polaroid every day for 6000 days – starting in 1979 and ending on his deathbed as he lay dying of cancer in 1997. Here’s some more of Jamie’s poignant story, as featured on the Guardian website in 2008.

As a photographer, of course I find the power of the image incredibly stirring – and a catalogue of work stretching over 6000 days is a chronicle of a life which holds me absolutely in thrall. Yet, creating a ‘photo diary’ is something that certainly isn’t restricted to professional photographers, in fact far from it. I’ve been involved in ‘photo a day’ projects for many years, both participating and seeing friends do so, and have come to the conclusion that whilst I absolutely love the concept, it’s just not something for me.

Creating a photo a day diary is an amazing thing. If you feel you’d like to have a go, I would wholeheartedly urge you to try it. Not only does it encourage you to look at your life in a whole new way, it opens your mind to a different way of thinking. You start seeing your life from the outside as well as just from the inside; it opens up your horizons in a way I can’t explain. And not only that, the images that you take are such powerful memories that you’ll keep forever.

One of my own photo a day images. I remember rushing outside when I saw the storm building to catch this shot just before the weather broke. I had to stand on a bucket with my camera over my head to get this shot!

So if I think a photo a day is such a great thing, why isn’t it for me? The reason is that I can’t approach it without my professional photographer head on. I wish I could take it off sometimes, but I just can’t. When I attempted to do this type of project for myself, every single image, every day, had to be better than the day before. I had to create a piece of art which continually stretched me, I had to create something unique and different every single day. Whilst using a photo a day project is a fantastic way to work on your photographic skills, particularly if you are new to photography, for me I inevitably used it as a stick to beat myself with. Oh no, I can’t use that image, because it’s not as great as yesterday’s. The simple fact is that you can’t continually, every day of your life, improve upon the day before. Life isn’t  like that. Life and learning is like a tide; it ebbs and flows. What washes up on the shore of your knowledge, as a result of these tides, is what really matters.

So, eventually, I gave up on the Photo a Day. I knew what I should be doing and how I should approach it; I just couldn’t take my work hat off. A photo a day should be a single document of a particular moment in time of that day. It’s not about taking the best image, or the most artistic one, and especially not about fabricating something exciting in order to have a ‘good’ photograph. It should be real and visceral and a true reminder of what your life is all about. If you’re a human being like me, then that life isn’t constantly full of drama, excitement and amazing things. Most of the time, it’s pretty humdrum. Yet, those humdrum things, when you look back upon them via the medium of a photograph which recorded them in a true, non-glossy manner, are the most important memories of all. They piece together to make the truth of who you are, where you’ve been and what your life was all about.

So if you’re thinking of starting your own Photo a Day, make it real. Don’t try to use your expensive DSLR for every day – I promise you, you’ll soon get fed up of carting it about wherever you go, making what should be a fun project into a pain in the rear. Use your camera phone or pocket compact. Take a few images throughout the day and choose just one to keep. Not necessarily the best shot, but the one that resonates with you most when you think back upon your day. And if you want to use the project to improve your photography skills, then limit that ‘posh’ image to once a week, or even less if you feel that would suit you. After all, it’s a project about your life; it’s not a life about your project.

Finally, don’t set yourself the impossible target of recording every single day of the rest of your life. Unless you’re an incredibly dedicated type of character, that’s a challenge which would scare the heck out of any of us. Just take it one day, one month, one season at a time. And, whilst it’s a project which is inevitably going to have the most importance to you over anyone else, don’t forget to share the results. After all, I’m so glad that we can look back at Jamie Livingston’s incredible 6000 days, aren’t you?