The death of a project

This is one of the last photos that I made in the 365 A Photo a Day. I didn’t quite make it to photo 365. This is about photo 300. I simply burned out on the project. Every day it became harder and harder to make an image that I cared about. In the end, I was just pressing the shutter release to just get it over with. I hated just going through the motions but that is where I found myself. So I quit. I’m a quitter. And I couldn’t be happier.

I created the project with the intent of making photos in various situations, of varying subjects and to force myself to practice my craft. The project met all those objectives but it also revealed a distaste in making photographs this way. There wasn’t much opportunity to put a lot of thought into each photo. Planning the outcome was difficult with any consistency. There was not time for planning when the photo just needed to be made and left behind. There was always another photo that needed to be created. I wasn’t happy with the work. I was just going through the motions.

Beyond the photos that I made, beyond the technical practice, I learned how I work best. I need to put time into the image before I even pick up the camera. I need to meditate on the lighting, the mood and the content before I start the physical processing of making an image. My process begins with the meditation. It may seem strange to say that the creating starts with a lot of thinking. In the end, I will make better pictures if not a lot of them.