What I Learned From My 366 Photo Project

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What I Learned From My 366 Project

Dan Riordan

November 1, 2016

The photos from my 366 project can be viewed on Facebook, "Early Morning 2015-2016" https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101079650804782.1073741857.185105701&type=1&l=d2f0949e9c

In October 2015 I was diagnosed as having one year to live. I decided to have a project and settled on one that had long resonated with me—a 366 Project. I would take and post one photo a day for 366 days (2016 is a leap year). Actually I took between 3 and 15 photos a day and Mary, my wife, chose one for me to post. I selected Facebook as my posting site. I was comfortable with the process of posting there, though it is possible that Instagram would have worked as well. Regardless, I am happy with the decision. 

I set some parameters for myself. I would take the photos only on my iPhone 6, take them on the morning of the day I would post them, and take only photos of things I could see in or from my yard or along one of the three routes I could take each morning to buy the morning newspaper. If I were not in Menomonie, I would do the best I could with whatever was at hand in the morning. Most of the photos were taken within two miles of my house. The others were taken in Minneapolis, Waukesha, Cincinnati, Austin, Seattle, Port Angeles, Victoria, West Glacier and St. Mary, Montana. I tried to mix up the images so that I presented a range of topics, to avoid using the same locale over and over.  Some, however, like one of the hilltops along Rudiger Road just outside Menomonie, became favorites. Those I tried to present in various seasons and lighting.

The easiest place was our yard. We live on a high hill looking east over Lake Menomin. Sunrise pictures quickly became a staple for me. In the summer I often got up at 5, took the photo and went back to bed. In winter the sun rises about 8 making the dawn much easier to capture. Also we have a large native perennial garden with many species. Those became an interesting source of images in the summer, though I found pictures of blossoms more difficult to present than I had expected—I wanted more than a guide book shot of the plant.

I learned many things during the year, both about myself and photography. I think that the most substantial change was the way I “look.” I notice things differently. I notice form, lines, composition, story, compelling images. I am in the world differently than I was a year ago. A good way to say it is that I participate more. I see trees outlined against the sky. I see patterns, in clouds, in fields, even in flocks of birds. I don’t just see trees but notice their shape even the way the ends of branches interact with the sky; I don’t just see clouds but notice the patterns of light and dark, thick and thin.  

My composition clearly got better. I developed a finer awareness of leading lines, blocks of color and blocks of form. I learned to position those in the image so that they worked together to make a unified whole. As I got better at this aspect of my work the images became more meditative or compelling.

Coupled with expanded awareness, I found a willingness to stop, even go back, to select an image. When I began, I just passed those scenes, thinking, “Too bad I missed it. Maybe next week.”  The other day I backed the car up several hundred yards to get back to the correct position to take the photo with the effect I wanted.

I learned to accept the challenge. A year has a lot of cloudy, rainy days. It would be easy to just say I’ll post something from yesterday or skip the post all together, but I made myself seek those images and I found them. After a while I enjoyed the challenge of those days. I found puddles, drops running down windows, wet leaves and rocks all ready to be photographed.

I realized the value of the people who liked and commented on my photos. I could tell by likes and comments what type of images played best. I tried to repeat some of the things people liked: sunrises, lonely roads, people doing morning things (though I didn’t have all that many people because most of my photos were landscapes), flowers in dance step with one another, repetition in architecture. As the year progressed an interesting thing happened— I started to take photos with my audience in mind. They became something I offered to the audience. The photos were for them. No longer were the photos something to check off on my day’s list of duties. As this sense developed another change occurred. The audience became co-creators. As I took the photos I felt the audience looking at the scene and the camera screen. They were watching to see what I was doing. We took the photos together.

As my sense of creating for and with an audience changed, so did my sense of what I was doing with the photos. I started to render the mornings. The goal of the shots became to create a sense of the meaning of early morning. How could I catch that something present only in the morning, at sunrise, in the garden, on the road, over the hills, in the fields, in the clouds? I had moved from morning snapshots to, well, morning poems. I found my self driving around choosing a route because I figured that I would find the image--the poem--for this morning on that route. Often I passed up a scene because I could sense that it was wrong. It couldn’t present the core, she soul of the morning. I remembered those scenes, though, so that when the light was right, I could return to the scene to find it was the right one for the day.

My sense of connection changed. I am not really sure how to discuss this phenomenon. Connection means various things--aware of, joined to, emotionally moved by, part of. I have not worked out the complexities of this new realization. It implies a spiritual dimension that I discuss below. I do know that I feel closer to my locale and the things in it. I have had to find new subjects, not just repeat taking the same shots. I often thought that I had recently taken enough of the lake or the sunrise or the flowers and turned to other subjects, which I had to find. I had to develop a memory for what was out there on all the different routes. I learned the nooks and crannies of the routes, where I could safely stop the car, where the coots flocked on the water, where the perennials put forth new blossoms. Through the searching they became my hills, my roads, my lake, my geese, my blossoms.

As the project came to an end, I began to work with meditation. I took a course here in town led by friends and I have done some reading about meditation and about the relationship of photography to meditation. Meditation calls for awareness and a temporary release from external concerns to contact with inner worlds. As I experience meditation I am regularly reminded of the practice of photography. I can only take photos if I am aware, in the moment. I focus on the intricacies of the item, its internal lines, forms, tensions. Like breath I draw them in, snap the shutter and exhale them out. I find somehow the statement the item makes, the connection that it makes with me. This experience reminds me of walking meditation but I am not clear on the way this works. And while I can see how taking photos could be a meditative practice, I often take photos not thinking about how they are meditative. Viewers sometimes commented that the photos are meditative. Some even called them a manifestation of spirit or God. I intend to explore the possibility that these photos have a spiritual dimension, another power.

I feel satisfied. I have accomplished a goal, and the process has clearly given people delight. I have been asked to put all these images into a book. I would not put all of them in unless I could find a cheap way to print the book, but I might create a book that contained my selection of the best. I will have an exhibit this winter at a local bar/restaurant with another artist. She has chosen a number of my photos to render in paintings and I will display the originals. Our work will hang side by side or at least in the same room. I am quite honored by this exhibit because my partner is the former chair of the UW-Stout Art Department and she approached me to do this with her.

This week I met my oncologist who told me that I have already lived longer than he thought I would. This project helped propel me through a difficult year, kept me focused on something other than that depressing prognosis. I don’t know how long I have to live and I don’t know what my next photo project will be, but that project will help me fill my remaining time with joy and creativity.