The 365 - Esther
It’s hard to remember where exactly, but I’m almost certain I stole the idea from
someone on MySpace of all places. It’s nothing new now (or then) of course, but
it was a creative lifesaver. The idea was to post one photo per day for a year.
Lots of people do different things as a “365” on various platforms now & a decade ago I didn’t
feel able to make the time to be creative & didn’t particularly have the
headspace for it either. It’s what they call “being in a bad place.” The blog
provided a structure & was nothing to do with work, which everything else
seemed to be then. Looking back at that time seems as if it was all darkness
& claustrophobia, but looking back at the blog tells a different story.
Doing the photoblog allowed a small, manageable level of creativity, could
be done on the hoof & you had some nice pictures at the end of it. A good
day was when something lucky turned up to snap or an image turned out better
than expected, something you didn’t have to alter, crop or - frankly - delete. As
you’d expect, there would be periods when it was more difficult to post every
day, during illness for instance but that could be solved by taking extra
pictures to make up for it. Obviously no-one else was bothered but it seemed
important to keep it going. It didn’t seem onerous technology-wise although now
it would be unthinkable…no mobile phone, so uploading from a digital camera
plugged into the Mac? How very last decade! Yet it ended up going on for three
years.
I made some rules for myself. It seemed a straightforward way to stay in
control. No humans would be included. There was some pretentious sense that
they would be present despite their absence & this would be evident in the
images. At the beginning, I’d pick well-known phrases or idioms, often puns
when coupled with the photos as captions. Sometimes the captions made some
sense of the image & vice versa. At around the end of a year, it seemed
like a good idea to caption the photos with song titles; listening to music
whenever possible is a habit & a lifesaver & sometimes a lyric would
suggest itself as a suitable caption. It also seemed like a crafty way to get
other people to listen to decent music.
It didn’t take long to start learning about even the most basic ways to
improve the images. The most significant & lasting of these lessons was the
importance of light – having enough, how to use it, how to tip the camera to
get more in, what something would look like without it, whether or not you were
okay with that & how to bleach out a subject altogether. Of course a lot of
that can be taken care of with simple filters on your phone now but it’s good
to have learned the hard way or really you’re barely learning at all.
Many years previously, my Grandad had taken up what was then somewhat
disparagingly called “amateur photography” & joined a local Photography
Club. Later on was different but as a very young person, I viewed him as fairly
authoritative & someone not to be messed with, so I’d never imagined he
even had an artistic side or would consider it a suitable use of time. But there it was
- he’d gone to these photography classes & really enjoyed them. For the
life of me, I can’t recall any of his pictures but one: a baby bird on a branch
surrounded by foliage. What the Photo Club perhaps hadn’t realised - but his
family knew all too well - was that the bird & branch combination in
question had sat on his sideboard for years, a cute but all-too ceramic
ornament that we’d seen a million times. History doesn’t record whether or not
he’d pulled the wool over the collective eyes of the Photo Club.
I remembered this because for one thing, it was an obviously amusing stunt & it was good to experience Grandad’s special brand (!) of humour & for another it validated in my mind the notion that you could take an attractive or interesting photo of anything. Even if it was a bit silly, why not? Even if it was boring, it could be made to appear interesting & lively. I wish I could see how Grandad would fare with Snapchat filters.
There wasn’t a lot of all-out absurdity in the photoblog but it wasn’t
off-limits. There was a lot of the
Ordinary. The Spectacular was easy when it was available but I found the
Ordinary or the scrappy quite appealing, wrestling to find its beauty sometimes
an achievement in itself. The Narnia-scape of 2010 provided a little of
everything. 2010 was a gift at the start. January was seemingly endless days of
snow all the time. The ice was a phenomenon & the snow rendered everything
special. Gradually themes emerged, through preference or necessity,
particularly during Scotland’s long, dark winters: the natural world, cats,
pattern, architectural features, window displays, different art elements &
anywhere the light could be found. The blog catalogued holidays, days out,
nights out, the drudgery of going out & coming home in the dark, birthdays,
seasons, bereavements & love.
Although it was all over by 2013, the most peculiar thing about looking
back over the photos is that I can remember where almost all of them were
taken…
There are thousands of ideas to help us all be creative, especially at this
peculiar time & with the internet. It seems everyone is racing to save each
other’s mental wellbeing which is a wonderful thing. Maybe the 365 in all its
glory could do with a virtual dust off. Maybe you have started your own
sanity-saving projects.
Forgive the laboured comparison but the photoblog represents for me an
example of how creativity can, like the cheapest of digital cameras, find the
light in dark times. A few seconds per day was all it took to keep me afloat
& now I’m flooded with memories.
Cool!
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DeleteYes. So nice, Esther. Though my phone camera keeps the record, now, I love this idea.
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