For the last few years, I’ve given myself small art challenges to keep my creative juices flowing, and, in all honesty, to give me a semi-physical and conclusive product to show and feel satisfied with. Back in 2021, I decided to use an old film camera style app to record my year as though I had a disposable camera in my pocket. When the year was up, I printed them out and put them into an album I decorated to be my yearbook (you can read about it here for part 1 and part 2). I was really content with the outcome and find it fun to show to friends who are into that sort of thing, not to mention it is much nicer to reminisce with a book than just on your phone or computer. For 2022, I tried (and failed) at keeping up with a 365 day photo challenge, where as the name suggests, I would take and post one photo a day. Now with 2023 coming up, I wanted to make my final decision for the new year.
I have been pretty hesitant about attempting another 365 day challenge. Even though I have probably over 20,000 photos on my phone alone and even more on SD cards from my camera (yes, I take a LOT of photos), most of those are not evenly distributed throughout my days. Weekend hikes, travel, and honestly just times of year that are more photogenic (*cough cough* spring and summer) end up making the highest percentage of my shots. In my attempt early this year, I found, disappointingly enough, that my day to day life is not exciting as my photos from outings sometimes make it seem. It was decently laborious to keep up!
But, to play devil’s advocate, I want to also challenge my previous thought. Part of photography is finding beauty in lesser seen things and learning how to make mundane situations look artful. In accepting my 2022 defeat, I can recognize that I was often too busy to put thought into finding subjects and didn’t put enough effort into it. I mean, it’s called a challenge for a reason, doing anything every single day requires at least minimal dedication.
As I want to improve with honing my creativity and keep photography going, I think I will try this challenge once again for 2023. I made another Instagram account to host the photos, as well as make it easier to upload to Shutterfly to have them printed at the end of the year. The link is here if you want to follow along, or find me at “@beppa.2023”.
Here’s to hoping I can actually keep up with it this time. I think that being already settled into grad school life will certainly be beneficial, plus with the help of therapy I can go on solo hikes again, so it is easier to get more photos than before. And if I do fail again, I can learn from my mistakes and find a more reasonable challenge for 2024. Either way, I’m not letting myself be disappointed by last year and will keep giving myself goals outside of school to work towards, no matter how small. If you, reader, are considering something similar for yourself, I say do it! See what happens and if you don’t reach your goals, it still counts for something that you made the attempt!
Happy reading,
-Beppa