Severe Jam Damage

I finished the 365days project on flickr yesterday. I can’t say that I’m happy with my final shot - I was tired and cranky and its kind of a lazy shot. Very little setup and effort put into it, which is why I’ve posted my day 363 shot in the blog which I’m much happier with. A year of my life in self-portraits - although even that isn’t quite true as I only managed shots for 217 days.
I ‘gave up’ twice - unhappy with both my technique and myself - and then came back to it with a bang for all of about four days until I once again lost my creative spark.
January and February I was using the Finepix Z2 - a slim little machine that could be thrown into my purse and pulled out on a whim. There are a fair number of ‘arms length’ self portraits from the Z2 - not particularly flattering as my arms aren’t that long and the fixed focal length made my face look deformed. With the limitations of the camera I tried different things, using a tripod, props, hats and different locations to make something interesting. My potatoshop skills were pretty rudimentary - cross processing and desaturation was about the limit of it.
March and April were fairly similiar but the weather was getting warmer so I could go outside - also I went to Barcelona but had neither the time nor the patience to set up intricate shots - he11 who does on a holiday?
I bought the D80 in May of last year and there is a noticeable improvement in the quality of shots. Partially down to the camera and partially down to a new found sense of interest in the project. Day 141 was the first hiccup. I took a break for a couple of weeks, unsure of what I was doing. July and August were pretty good months, I managed a shot most every day. Most of my ‘explored’ shots come from the summer portraits. Day 151 is still the most popular shot on my stream.
September was really flaky and October wasn’t much better.
Then came November.
The more astute among you will notice that there were NO shots taken in November. You may also remember there were no posts to the blog in November. Actually, there was nothing at all done in November bar me writing the World’s Worst Novel - I have mentioned that I killed off all the characters in one massive cull in the last paragraph haven’t I?
December wasn’t much better. I got lazy and used to not taking a shot - there was always ‘tomorrow’ and I wasn’t ‘that far behind.’ And then it was January ‘the final month’. Even that didn’t get me taking pictures, I knew I was falling farther and farther behind, and it was only in the last two weeks that I began to make the effort again, despite a massive lack of creativity.
And now its done.
I don’t know why I started the project in the first place, possibly something to do with the long cold boring January nights last year. Or maybe something to do with wanting to see if I really was any good at it. I know a lot of people think that the whole thing is pretty narcissistic but I never really thought of it that way. I hate looking at myself in photos for a start, so when I was choosing that days shot it wasn’t with the idea of ‘which one do I look the best in?’ The questions I asked myself were more technical: ‘Which one has better shape \ colour \ form \ lighting \focus?’
If I was to look at the photos from a more self-centred point of view I’d have to wonder what I was trying to say on a particular day. Some of them I really love and think ‘jeez, that was a fluke’ others are just awful, awful, awful and I don’t know what I was thinking posting them up.
And then there is the nostalgia \ life thing. Looking back at the first few days and weeks of the project I’m tempted to question everything. Has anything about my life really changed - besides getting another year older - am I any closer to realising any of my goals or ambitions? Probably not. Has my self-confidence increased? In some aspects, but generally no. Am I more comfortable in front of a camera? No, not really, especially if other people are behind it. Do I have a better understanding of what it takes to make a good portrait? I think I’m beginning to…

My 365 flickr set