Project 365 + other alternatives
Posted in Photography Class | 39 Comments »
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Back when The Daily Digi opened it’s virtual doors in January of 2008, Janet posted about doing a photo-a-day project (also known as project 365). If you have made a daily photo resolution for this year, you will enjoy reviewing that same post for some ideas and I (Katie) have a few more to share as well.
What if you don’t want to take a photo every day, or can’t possibly think of what you would shoot on a daily basis? Well, I have plenty of other alternatives to inspire you also, so read on!
I completed a full year of taking daily pictures in 2008 and I’m very proud of myself for finishing a Project 365 (it was actually 366 that year because of leap year). I learned so much about myself as a photographer, and as a person by grabbing my camera each and every day to document the little details. I now have a very comprehensive photo essay of what our lives were like in the year 2008. Here’s a collection of the pictures I took in March of 2008:
Project 365 Quick.ish page by Something Blue Studios. Fonts are Fontologie Textura Traced and Calibri
The best thing I did while working on my photo-a-day project was to write a little bit about each picture when I uploaded them to my flickr account. I also used these photos on my blog throughout the year and included many details there. Now I have plenty of documentation to go with the pictures which makes for a complete story. I strongly suggest that you keep a blog or find an online place to share at least some of your Project 365 photos. It will keep you accountable and motivated throughout the year!
Why do Project 365?
- It’s a great way to get in the habit of taking pictures on a daily basis.
- You will improve as a photographer because you will be practicing every day.
- The year will be documented in photos from beginning to end.
Tips and Ideas for Project 365 in 2010:
- 365project.org is a very cool site that even has a facebook app to help you share your photos with your friends and family
- Photojojo has a great article about doing the 365 project
- Liz of Paislee Press has a flickr group 365′ers who want to share with other group members. Also a great place to find inspiration!
- Sweet Shoppe Designs has a forum for photo 365 ideas and sharing, as well as a flickr group.
- Scrap Orchard has a forum for photo 365 participants
- The Lily Pad has a forum just for Project 365
- Little Dreamer Designs is hosting Project 365 challenges on their blog
- Shutter Sisters posted a thoughtful musings blog entry on doing the 365 project and they also have a flickr group for photo 365 participants
You are probably wondering if I continued doing the photo-a-day thing in 2009? I decided not to continue and I don’t plan to do it this year either. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a FANTASTIC challenge, but I just don’t think I could do it every year. It was a struggle many days and I felt like sometimes I just took pictures of boring things so I would have my photo of the day. The trick is definitely to stay fresh and find new perspectives and ideas, so be sure to the list of links above for some help.
I do believe that every photographer who wants to improve their skills should try doing the 365 at least once if they are up to it. I also think there are some other wonderful ways to grow and enjoy participating in regular challenges, especially using weekly and monthly themes to explore new frontiers.
This year my focus is going to be more on capturing the pictures I want to represent each month of the year. I also want to explore themes and techniques in new ways. I have found a lot of online resources that keep me excited and interested in photography (which keeps me excited and interested in scrapbooking also). These links will also come in handy for 365′ers since you will need a lot of ideas to take you through an entire year.
Weekly and Monthly Photo Projects
- Photochallenge.org will have a new theme every 4 weeks. The goal is to take one picture per week
- i HEART faces has a new theme posted each week on their blog
- Beyond Megapixels is posting one theme challenge and one technique challenger per month
- Simple Scrapper will be posting a monthly top ten project with a free template
- Get It Scrapped will be posting a pdf idea sheet and sketch each month on their blog throughout 2010. Great for photo and/or scrapbooking ideas
- Photo Friday posts a new photo prompt every Friday.
- Digital Photography School posts weekly assignments in their community forums
- Two Peas has a different photography challenge posted each week
- Sony Backstage posts a different challenge each month.
- The Lily Pad posts a new photography challenge every month
- Little Dreamer Designs is hosting Project 52 challenges on their blog
- O Scraps posts a different photography challenge each month in their forum.
- Shabby Pickle posts a different challenge each month along with some photography tips.
- 12/12 – via Cathy Zielske’s blog in 2008. Simply take 12 pictures on the 12th day of each month. Based on this now defunct blog, but the idea is still a great one!
- Ali Edwards has a great series she calls “A Week in the Life” that you could do once a year, or even once a month.
Many of these sites allow you to submit your photos for feedback and/or community involvement, but of course you don’t have to do that. Simply follow along for inspiring ideas if that is more your style.
Be sure to grab your camera (it doesn’t have to be a fancy one) and get ready to shoot some amazing photos this year!
P.S. Congratulations to Heather H who was randomly drawn from the comments left on yesterday’s post. She won a $10 GC to Paislee Press!
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Thanks for the inspiration and the links – I am bookmarking them for help with my own 365 project!
These are great resources. I know I also struggle with taking daily pictures. There are only my husband and I here now – the kids are grown – and I found myself also taking boring pictures just to fill spots in my P365 templates last year. But when the grandkids are here I can fill up my card with photos! Maybe a monthly or weekly summary is a better way to go for me, too.
Thanks for the links! I don’t think 365 photos in a year is feasible for me, but I saw scrapper who did a layout a week with the photos that she had taken (didn’t matter if there were 7, less than 7 or way more!) and she journalled about it. I’m contemplating doing that to capture 2010 for my family.
Great resources. I tried the photo-a-day last year and failed somewhere in teh middle of April. I couldn’t get the pictures off my cameras and they they got mixed up on dates bc they were on different cameras. I think 52 photos would be much better for me. With some full week highlights.
Thanks for sharing this today! I’ve completed my first week of my 2010 365 project and I want to do a layout with them. I had planned to spend some time today looking for some great templates. You’ve save me a huge amount of time
http://www.simplyme.typepad.com/my_365
Thank you so much for all these great resources; you rawk! I’m not participating in the Project 365, but luv taking pics and scrappin’ multiple pics at a time. Thus, all this info can be helpful for me too! Thanx!
in 2007, I participated in a photo-a-day challenge in May. I just looked through that mini album I made that year. I never considered doing a whole year because that month was just overwhelming to me!
) I love seeing how people have documented their 365 projects!
Wow what a great list of resources ~ thanks for the links. I like the idea of doing one week of photos a month rather than every day.
Thanks so much for the links. I attempted a photo a day project one month and after about 13 days it was so hard. I really wanted to capture our lives right then but it just didn’t happen. I hated to give up but also just ran out of energy. I still think about that project and how close I was or wasn’t. In I retrospect, I beleive that planning or some sort of plan is the key. Your post is really going to help me accomplish a project that I really want to complete. Thanks again!
Thanks for the links. I tried the 365 but found it hard to maintain. I like the other ideas though.
Thanks so much for all those great resources! It will be nice to have places to check out for those times I am struggling with what to take a photo of for the day!
I´m actually doing the 365 project for the third year in a row! 2008 was almost complete, 2009 made it all the way and this year I´m gonna try to do some more challenging photos – looking through the links today really helps out!
Thanks for all the links!
Thanks for all of the links- it’s great to get some inspiration. I feel like I’m the only one not doing the photo a day thing, so I appreciate the other links too.
You forgot to mention Weeds & Wildflowers! There’s an active Project 365 forum over there, and Gina has made it super simple to keep up with her new approach and monthly incentives! (Not on the CT, just a huge fan)
These are all wonderful ideas for project 365 thanks
Thanks for plugging our challenges, at PhotoChallenge.org! We appreciate all the help we can get.
Super list of resources! TYTY
I am trying to do 365 this year…or at least close:) My real goal is to document now for our kids to review in the future.
Well put together ideas…. I know I couldn’t do this project… But I could take a week or even a month to do this concept…. I take a lot of photos anyway… Just not daily…
I tried the 365 project last year but got sidelined very early. I like the idea of posting to a blog to be held accountable and journaling about each picture. I am going to have to try it again. Thanks for the resources. I will succeed this time.
Designer Digitals also promotes a 365 with a flickr group which is very active. I have just joined them and it is a lot of fun.
AWESOME resource list! I finished the photo taking part of last year, and am currently playing catch up on the layouts (I am at July). I had been following the Weeds & Wildflowers 365 project…at first I stressed missing a few pics, then I thought – eh, whatever, I still blogged those days (albeit in catch up spurts).
This year, I am doing the project again, but no pressure. I might keep my blog caught up, I might not. I might use my own photos, but will probably include several from my children – they take photos from different perspectives than I do, which keeps things interesting
I may or may not scrap them all – my goal is to have quarterly books of my scrapped pages, so even if my 365 pages don’t make enough, I had planned to scrap other special and fave photos from each month…which would do fine to fill them up. If I could afford it, a year of monthly 20 page books would be a neat gift for my parents now that they are so far away from all of the grandkids.
So this year, I just decided, no rules, I’ve never been good at following rules and guidelines anyway
I feel a lot of pressure in the P365 digital scrapbooking arena to make the shots *artistic* more than *meaningful* — and while those things aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re not always the same thing. That’s the thing I find making me not want to **ever** participate. I started doing it last year and once I caught my son’s first step on camera…I felt like I was done…I’d captured what I wanted. And that was in February. Perhaps this year, with a little clearer direction of how I’m going to do it, I’ll get it done. But I’ve decided that *any* day I take a photo – perfect or not – is better than a day that I don’t.
Thank you for all your tips–I started last year but just couldn’t keep up. I do like the idea of scrapping the week–I think I can do that, but with 5 kiddos, I spend most of my time in the car driving them around–doesn’t make for a great project 365!
I’ve seen people5 in the forum doing their 365 project, but I just could not bring myself into it… I don’t know why… Am I scared of commitment? Maybe… but I do exercise myself in the habit of bringing the camera everywhere to capture interesting photos.That way I can learn to take better pictures with our new camera
Thanks so much for the tips and the linking.
Great links – thanks. I did 365 last year and am still trying to decide if I want to do it this year. My aim for the year is to get to know my new camera better so 365 would be good for this…
The 365 project is a little much for me personally. But I’ve been thinking about doing one of the smaller projects. Cathy Z posted recently about doing a week-long version. I think I can handle that!
Thank you so much for the links. I look forward to looking through them. I watched the 365 projects from the sidelines the last few years. I am going to do the 52 theme this year. I started writing in a journal to help me with the layouts. If I don’t take any great photos one particular week, I can scrap my thoughts on the week. It will be fun at the end of 2010 to see and read about our family. GAME ON! Thanks for your daily inspiration. You are at the top of my blog favorites!
I wish I did this when the kids were younger. I made my own project 52 last year. One photo a week was good for me and made it easier for me to scrap each month. I like that I can look back to see what we did. This worked best for me. Maybe be I retire I’ll do the first 365 days for retirement.
I must recommend the 12 of 12 – I took all the photos (occasionally on the 13th, and once on the 11th) and make notes, still have to scrap some of them. But it was fun, and very doable.
This year I’m doing project 365. Since I have a kit for it I hope that it will help me keep going beyond March/April, which is where I’ve fallen off in years past.
Thanks for the post.
I’m attempting this project this year. My goal is not necessarily to take a picture every day, but a few a week and I’m using the Sweet and Simple Life Templates (From Weeds and Wildflowers: http://weedsandwildflowersdesign.com/shoppe/). I can still be creative since the template layers aren’t merged and the quick pages make this task easy to complete in little time. Thank you for the inspiring links – I’m sure I’ll need them this year!
What a great set of links! I personally am going to do p52 or some variation thereof! I know ScrapMatters is also doing a P365 challenge twice a month and has a forum as well. It is great to get support and cheer you on part of the way through the year.
Wow! The 365project.org site is awesome! And it links right to Facebook, how perfect is that? Thanks so much for the resources, inspiration and insight – as always!
I did Project 365 last year and what I found is that some days I took a picture at night of anything just to have a picture of that day. And I also felt like they had to be artsy or something. I think feeling like I HAD to take a picture took a little of the enjoyment out of it for me. That being said, I highly recommend trying it. It gets you in the habit of keeping that camera handy. It also reminds you to stop and capture a moment. I am relieved to not be doing it this year, but finding that I take a photo almost everyday anyway. Only now they are more meaningful.
Thanks for the great links. I only made it to March last year so I am trying to do it all this year. Weeds and Wildflowers is another great resource. I think mixing in some QP’s will help me make it this year!
You have some great links in here and I love the layout and look of this site.
I started my project365 January 31, 2007 and haven’t stopped yet. Over 1000 days and counting… my pics are being hosted over at ShutterCal.com, which is a great site designed with 365 in mind. I highly recommend it to anyone undertaking this project!
Wonderful info:
Gotta Pixel, also has a 365 day challenge and posts daily inspirational challenges to help take that pic a day in the forum site and in its daily newsletter/blog post! I’m loving this challenge!
http://www.gottapixel.net/forum/index.php
[...] Project 365 ideas and great alternatives [...]
Katie: I have participated in the 12 of 12 challenge (originally started by Susan Keuter) for over one year now. The “now defunct” blog has since been replaced by a flickr group and, only this month, we now have a facebook group. It’s a great way to capture “a day in the life of”, with the end result being 12 layouts representing your year. It’s turned out to be so much fun that I am continuing.
The links are here (I hope they work):
http://www.flickr.com/groups/12of12scrapbook/
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=246184797265
Many thanks for recommending 365project.org
The fairly new site is very exciting at the moment, and it is great to see it being linked to Facebook and Twitter. There is a fantastic community of excellent photographers and is a joy to see so many inspiring photos being uploaded everyday. The weekly theme is a fun aspect that anyone can enter and is a great way to give us all some inspiration to make our 365 projects memorable. Keep your eyes posted for lots more features due to be released in the near future.
You can follow me at…
365project.org/Rachel
Look forward to seeing your photos!
Best regards
Rachel