That was once around the sun

It's over... done and dusted. It's been a year in the making and, to be honest, I'm glad it's finished. And I'm amazed that I actually succeeded. Or did I? The goalposts shifted very early on in the project from a photo per day to a "good" photo per day. Here, I define a "good" photo as one that I will want to look at again (and, hopefully, again and again). So did I take 366 "good" photos? I think it's too early to tell, but I think the answer is probably no. Give me another couple of months to look through the set and see which photos I linger over.

One thing that I was curious about was whether taking daily photos would improve my photography skills. I'm probably not the person to judge that, but I think I have become more particular about the kinds of photos I size up now. I take far fewer repeats than I used to (with the exception, perhaps, of glacier lilies...), as well as reducing the number of marginal shots (especially at full zoom).

Would I recommend such a project to someone? I found it hard work, especially at first, so I would say it depends on that person, and what photos they enjoy taking. How likely is it that you will be able to take those kinds of photos? Is it weather-dependent? How much spare time do you have to think about and set up shots? All these factors come into play.

I would say that anyone interested in taking a photo-a-day should be prepared to wake up every morning with the thought in your head: what am I going to get a photo of today? A list of candidates really helps relieve some of that pressure, but it only goes so far. Of course, if your photographic criteria are more relaxed than mine then it's easily possible to take a photo per day.

Another important factor is how much you like your camera. The days I felt worst about this project were the days I had the camera I didn't enjoy using. Having a camera (or two) I enjoyed using made all the difference - it makes you feel like you can take anything.

So after all that, would I do it again? No, absolutely not. It was a fun experiment but I don't see any need to repeat the process. I don't feel I have anything to gain from beginning another project, and I see plenty of things around me to photograph without the artificial need to take a picture every single day. Plus this project really got in the way of dealing with all the other photos we took over the year. The only type of project I might try would be a once-a-week photo diary, but that won't be for some time now. The next project is to turn the photos into a book-shaped souvenir :-)

It was an interesting, pleasant and often fun journey, but as always it's good to be home. And that was once around the sun.

Statistics from around the sun

It's been over a week since the project ended, and I've had some time to reflect on how the journey went. But before I put down those thoughts, I wanted to lay out the bare numbers.

Of the 366 photos, 190 (52%) were taken in landscape orientation, 157 (43%) were portrait and the remaining 19 (5%) were square. That's interesting to me as I hardly ever turned the camera round to its portrait orientation when I first started taking photos; it must be Maria's influence, as it's something she does a lot. The square photos obviously didn't start out that way, but some subjects really lend themselves to a square crop.

I used three cameras during the year. The Nikon D5000 SLR was the most heavily used with 266 photos. No surprise there - it's our best camera and the one I enjoy using the most. Next comes our most recent pocket-sized addition, the Canon SX230HS, with 52 photos, which is closely followed by our older Canon S3IS with 48 photos. The newer Canon got its 52 photos in less than 3 months, compared with about 7 months for the older S3IS for its tally of 48. I stopped using that camera altogether in October, and I doubt I will ever use it again.

Going by the tags on the photos, I took photos in 64 locations of 34 different kinds of subjects. And I took photos on all 7 days of the week :-)

Of the 64 places I tagged, 30 were visited only once, 12 were visited twice, 8 three times, 4 five times and 5 twice. I visited no place 6 times or 9 times, but I did visit the Sunshine Coast 7 times, downtown Vancouver 8, Stanley Park 10 and Jericho Beach 11 times. Then there's a big gap until one location I visited 22 times (Kits Beach) and then the big two: our home neighbourhood (Kitsilano) with 81 photos, and work (UBC) with 119.

The top ten subjects were water (45), flower (44), bird (37), mountain (36), transport (32), sky (32), tree (31), art (26), people (22) and architecture (21). A dozen subjects were targeted less than 5 times. The rest were somewhere in between. Some of the subjects probably overlap slightly and I doubt I've been as consistent as I intended to be - I have sea and water and snow as separate subjects, whereas to be truly accurate they would all be the same thing (i.e., water!). But the trend is clear: I really like to take pictures of natural subjects. I'm surprised by "transport" sneaking in at number 5 - I have quite a few photos which contain ships, aircraft and/or bicycles. "People" is also a surprise as I'm not really much of a people photographer. Or at least, I wasn't until I started taking on the role of semi-official photographer for the Tiddley Cove morris dancers.

As I mentioned at the 90 per cent mark, I'm really not an indoor photographer. Only 15 photos (4%!) were taken indoors or had indoor subjects, and not all of those were taken on days with bad weather. For the rest, I ventured out in whatever weather - rain, sleet and snow, windy and calm, sunny and cloudy.

How many photos did I take to get my 366? I'd be a while counting but it's in the thousands. I plan to go through and create a Flickr set of the "also-rans", the photos I took that I liked but didn't make it as a daily photo. I also have a pile of photos of subjects I planned to revisit on another day but didn't. It will be interesting to see how many of those I have :-)