I wasn’t coerced into taking a picture every day for a year. Actually, I kind of started doing it on the sly, without being asked, fully expectant to give it up after a week or so. Instead, I find it strangely rewarding to see the photos go online, and to see what my interests really are, even if finding photos to take on some days is work.
Other people’s photos look wonderful to me. Some people just do great photography. I think my photo-taking, when it doesn’t include portraits of the light post I ignored or the poor lighting, reflects myself in the same way that my writing reflects myself. By this, I don’t just mean that my subjects are what is me, but more than that – the underlying selection of subjects as a whole shows what kind of person I am.
In contrast, I see people taking photos of things that they set in front of a camera, and going places specifically to take pictures of buildings or events that they know they will find. My photos might not look so fancy as something I went out of my way to set up, and perhaps if I prepared my work more they would even impress me as much as the work of these others. Yet as I look at my day-to-day unfolding in photos each day, I’m becoming even more interested to learn what portrait my own thumbnails paint, and I’m glad that the style I’ve chosen for myself is giving me this glimpse at my inner canvas.
