Project 365 - The tutorial
Jan. 5th, 2010 01:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmjewelleOn the 2nd of January I found no less than THREE people starting on Project 365 (one was doing Project 365 #2!). And then I remembered the other three people who did Project 365 last year and didn't make it.
One day someone asked me how did I manage to have the drive to complete Project 365. Granted, it's not that hard, but maybe someone out there would like a tutorial on how to actually take 365 photos and upload them.
So because I'm feeling very shamelessly thick faced...
1. Never consider Project 365 a project. Ever.
The thing about personal projects is that we will always be extremely gungho in the beginning. We'll remember to whip out our cameras at every plate of food/pet/sculpture/car and snap and snap and upload and update our blog every single day at exactly the same time! We'll tell people "hold that pose, I wanna take a pic for my Project 365!" and make them freeze their contorted body/face/limbs/internal organs for MINUTES while you frame your perfect shot and it'll be up on LJ the minute you touch your front door.
Then the pictures stop coming. Why?
Short answer: You ran out of steam.
Long answer: Human nature dictates man is allergic to the word "personal" and "project". Look at how many people keep to their resolution to lose weight by the time August rolls by. Or look at the gazillion number of times I failed to complete Nanowrimo. Beginning a project is always exciting, and the prospect of completing it is what drives us. Yet when day-to-day commitments set in, and your parents hog your computer, or you come back from work at 10pm every night for two weeks toiling on a project and all you want to do is crash on your bed, or you find every day filled with monotony and making it pointless to take a picture of your computer AGAIN.
When you hit that monotony, consider your project doomed.
To avoid this, consider NOT calling it a project. Don't even use the word Project 365 in any conversation (except labelling your albums). As a project, the objective becomes "take a picture every day for a year". Just the SOUND of the objective doesn't really make me feel motivated. ONE picture? Only? Well that's very sad innit. What if I don't have a picture? No picture for that date then! BAM, project disrupted. Instead, try changing the objective. How about:
2. CHRONICLE EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS. OBSESSIVELY.
Well that sounds a lot better doesn't it? 8D
I didn't make it a point to embark on Project 365; in fact it never really crossed my mind like "HEY![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flat_foot completed Project 365, it looks fun, I'll do the same too!". Instead what went through my head was:
"If I'm gonna take photos of my life ALL THE TIME, I might as well try doing Project 365 while I'm at it!"
When I had to change my handphone I realised that there were a LOT of things around me that were simply too interesting to let up but did because I didn't carry a camera with me all the time (and when I did the camera kept DYING), so the first requirement I had was that my handphone HAD to have a camera. That way even if I didn't have an actual camera with me I could still take photos. Sure they weren't the best quality photos, but they were photos, and as long nothing was a big smudgey blur it was all good.
There is no rule in Project 365 that says you can only take ONE picture and nothing else.
Sometimes more than one exciting thing happens in a day; then you take more pictures. A bus ran over you? Take a picture of that. There was a jam on the Federal caused by a hobo? Drive slower, and try to take a picture of that. Your fingernails look particularly gangrenous? Take a picture of that. The point here is to have the mindset "I MUST HAVE A PICTURE OF THIS FOR POSTERITY" and *NOT* "I WANT TO TAKE A PIC OF THIS FOR PROJECT 365". As long as you feel your life would be incomplete WITHOUT A PICTURE OF THIS (whatever THIS is), you will constantly be compelled to take pictures (and thus have a complete daily album).
That being said...
3. It is totally and completely okay to cheat.
Remember what I said about chronicling your life obsessively? Chances are there will be days you'll take a LOT of photographs. Sometimes not at all. Some days you'll find two or seventeen interesting things to photograph. Some days you slept for 15 hours so you really had nothing to take a picture of (unless you want to show your bed, in which case be my guest). This is where you dig through the pictures from the interesting day, and use it as a photo for that day. Call it a substitute photo, call it cheating, but who's going to arrest you for that?
HOWEVER this shouldn't make you justify using FIVE photos from one day to fill up FIVE different days. If more than two days go by without anything interesting happening, consider stepping out of your house. Stick your head out the window. A car will pass by. Or a bird (if you don't live in front of a road). Or a person. Things WILL happen. YOU just take the photo.
4. Choose a site that'll allow you to update photos easily.
The main reason I chose Facebook was because
a) I could mass upload.
b) By publishing the photos, everyone would know I updated without manually plugging the URL on MSN.
I could've put it on a new blog, but that would require uploading the photos to photobucket, writing the entry, putting the picture inside, then publishing it. Imagine if you don't have the time or dedication to do this every day - do YOU want to write up 14 entries for each photo? Whatever the case, pick a style and stick to it; One recommendation is to collect your pics and put them in one post - that way you don't feel compelled to constantly stick to a pattern every time you update.
That being said...
5. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO UPDATE EVERY DAY.
Remember the part about interest dying because you feel you have to keep up? Yeah.
The objective is to TAKE a picture every day, NOT post a picture every day. Big difference. As long as you keep your pictures organized (labelling your pics according to date and putting it in a separate folder is a big help when you want to update), updating won't be a chore. So they can't wait for your next pic? Big deal, let them find somebody else's project to look at in the meantime. I had colleagues asking me why hadn't I updated in two weeks. I responded a week later with 21 pictures to browse through. Mass uploading DOES give a sense of achievement than one picture at a time since you'll be looking in awe at the amount of pictures you've taken in that short period. Try it.
5a. Transfer your pictures regularly.
I transferred mine out every two weeks or so because my phone memory got FULL. The faster you transfer them out, the less of a chore it becomes, and you won't have to cry if your phone suddenly dies on you with 40 pics in it.
6. Pick a camera that takes less than 2 seconds to start up. Then hold on to it like it's your third eye.
The last thing you want is a camera that takes so long to boot that whatever you wanted to take is GONE. My camera phone was SO fast even people who wanted to flee couldn't flee fast enough. Sure the quality was grainy, but I caught it on camera crystal clear, who's gonna care?
Someday, I will convert my eyes into cameras. MARK MY WORDS.
7. It's A LOT easier if you make it a routine.
I've been keeping a daily journal since 1991 and counting. There, I said it. (I'm such a smug bastard)
And with that, I hope everyone who's doing Project 365 this year found this useful and actually gets 365 pics to put up. If you don't think this tutorial was adequate, here's a second tutorial parroting everything I just said.
Gamba! 0(^_^)0
One day someone asked me how did I manage to have the drive to complete Project 365. Granted, it's not that hard, but maybe someone out there would like a tutorial on how to actually take 365 photos and upload them.
So because I'm feeling very shamelessly thick faced...
1. Never consider Project 365 a project. Ever.
The thing about personal projects is that we will always be extremely gungho in the beginning. We'll remember to whip out our cameras at every plate of food/pet/sculpture/car and snap and snap and upload and update our blog every single day at exactly the same time! We'll tell people "hold that pose, I wanna take a pic for my Project 365!" and make them freeze their contorted body/face/limbs/internal organs for MINUTES while you frame your perfect shot and it'll be up on LJ the minute you touch your front door.
Then the pictures stop coming. Why?
Short answer: You ran out of steam.
Long answer: Human nature dictates man is allergic to the word "personal" and "project". Look at how many people keep to their resolution to lose weight by the time August rolls by. Or look at the gazillion number of times I failed to complete Nanowrimo. Beginning a project is always exciting, and the prospect of completing it is what drives us. Yet when day-to-day commitments set in, and your parents hog your computer, or you come back from work at 10pm every night for two weeks toiling on a project and all you want to do is crash on your bed, or you find every day filled with monotony and making it pointless to take a picture of your computer AGAIN.
When you hit that monotony, consider your project doomed.
To avoid this, consider NOT calling it a project. Don't even use the word Project 365 in any conversation (except labelling your albums). As a project, the objective becomes "take a picture every day for a year". Just the SOUND of the objective doesn't really make me feel motivated. ONE picture? Only? Well that's very sad innit. What if I don't have a picture? No picture for that date then! BAM, project disrupted. Instead, try changing the objective. How about:
2. CHRONICLE EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS. OBSESSIVELY.
Well that sounds a lot better doesn't it? 8D
I didn't make it a point to embark on Project 365; in fact it never really crossed my mind like "HEY
flat_foot completed Project 365, it looks fun, I'll do the same too!". Instead what went through my head was: "If I'm gonna take photos of my life ALL THE TIME, I might as well try doing Project 365 while I'm at it!"
When I had to change my handphone I realised that there were a LOT of things around me that were simply too interesting to let up but did because I didn't carry a camera with me all the time (and when I did the camera kept DYING), so the first requirement I had was that my handphone HAD to have a camera. That way even if I didn't have an actual camera with me I could still take photos. Sure they weren't the best quality photos, but they were photos, and as long nothing was a big smudgey blur it was all good.
There is no rule in Project 365 that says you can only take ONE picture and nothing else.
Sometimes more than one exciting thing happens in a day; then you take more pictures. A bus ran over you? Take a picture of that. There was a jam on the Federal caused by a hobo? Drive slower, and try to take a picture of that. Your fingernails look particularly gangrenous? Take a picture of that. The point here is to have the mindset "I MUST HAVE A PICTURE OF THIS FOR POSTERITY" and *NOT* "I WANT TO TAKE A PIC OF THIS FOR PROJECT 365". As long as you feel your life would be incomplete WITHOUT A PICTURE OF THIS (whatever THIS is), you will constantly be compelled to take pictures (and thus have a complete daily album).
That being said...
3. It is totally and completely okay to cheat.
Remember what I said about chronicling your life obsessively? Chances are there will be days you'll take a LOT of photographs. Sometimes not at all. Some days you'll find two or seventeen interesting things to photograph. Some days you slept for 15 hours so you really had nothing to take a picture of (unless you want to show your bed, in which case be my guest). This is where you dig through the pictures from the interesting day, and use it as a photo for that day. Call it a substitute photo, call it cheating, but who's going to arrest you for that?
HOWEVER this shouldn't make you justify using FIVE photos from one day to fill up FIVE different days. If more than two days go by without anything interesting happening, consider stepping out of your house. Stick your head out the window. A car will pass by. Or a bird (if you don't live in front of a road). Or a person. Things WILL happen. YOU just take the photo.
4. Choose a site that'll allow you to update photos easily.
The main reason I chose Facebook was because
a) I could mass upload.
b) By publishing the photos, everyone would know I updated without manually plugging the URL on MSN.
I could've put it on a new blog, but that would require uploading the photos to photobucket, writing the entry, putting the picture inside, then publishing it. Imagine if you don't have the time or dedication to do this every day - do YOU want to write up 14 entries for each photo? Whatever the case, pick a style and stick to it; One recommendation is to collect your pics and put them in one post - that way you don't feel compelled to constantly stick to a pattern every time you update.
That being said...
5. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO UPDATE EVERY DAY.
Remember the part about interest dying because you feel you have to keep up? Yeah.
The objective is to TAKE a picture every day, NOT post a picture every day. Big difference. As long as you keep your pictures organized (labelling your pics according to date and putting it in a separate folder is a big help when you want to update), updating won't be a chore. So they can't wait for your next pic? Big deal, let them find somebody else's project to look at in the meantime. I had colleagues asking me why hadn't I updated in two weeks. I responded a week later with 21 pictures to browse through. Mass uploading DOES give a sense of achievement than one picture at a time since you'll be looking in awe at the amount of pictures you've taken in that short period. Try it.
5a. Transfer your pictures regularly.
I transferred mine out every two weeks or so because my phone memory got FULL. The faster you transfer them out, the less of a chore it becomes, and you won't have to cry if your phone suddenly dies on you with 40 pics in it.
6. Pick a camera that takes less than 2 seconds to start up. Then hold on to it like it's your third eye.
The last thing you want is a camera that takes so long to boot that whatever you wanted to take is GONE. My camera phone was SO fast even people who wanted to flee couldn't flee fast enough. Sure the quality was grainy, but I caught it on camera crystal clear, who's gonna care?
Someday, I will convert my eyes into cameras. MARK MY WORDS.
7. It's A LOT easier if you make it a routine.
I've been keeping a daily journal since 1991 and counting. There, I said it. (I'm such a smug bastard)
And with that, I hope everyone who's doing Project 365 this year found this useful and actually gets 365 pics to put up. If you don't think this tutorial was adequate, here's a second tutorial parroting everything I just said.
Gamba! 0(^_^)0
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 06:40 pm (UTC)For a time I had a daily picture thing going on, but lost steam. I found the process of uploading my pics to my webserver, then plugging them into Live Journal so annoying and time consuming.
However, I have dubbed 2010 as a "self development" year, in which I rejuvenate my skills as a designer and photographer. As of the 1st of this year, I am doing a design a day but I have been contemplating doing a photo a day (or at least as often as possible) as well. Your post has made it a simple decision :)
If you care to check out my Design a Day blog, it's at http://dansdailydesigns.tumblr.com/
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:46 pm (UTC)Perhaps I'll hold a vote come the end of the year for people to help me choose which logo should be made into a font?
As for facebook, I'll happily add you to my friend list.
Look for Daniel Quattrociocchi (yes, my last name is freakin long :D)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:57 pm (UTC)But I discovered that too many photos kinda kills the fun of taking pics in the first place. XD So I'll be a normal person then. :P
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 01:01 am (UTC)1. i stopped Project 365 halfway because im not satisfied with taking photos with my hp...yes..stubborn me wants to use dslr for ALL the photos but sadly lugging one around is like =A=
2. hp quality is bad..and im picky and stubborn..lol..i like good quality output...
3. sad to say, but true to that i tried to put a strict rule to upload a photo every day. =A=
4. well..i tried not to cheat either...><
thanks dimmie for the good read =)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:33 am (UTC)probably not on this lj though >_>
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 10:34 am (UTC)1. Lack of net
2. Assignments and pressure to get a good grade
3. Boyfriend > more than anything else, aka I got my life back.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 06:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 09:29 am (UTC)WILL TRY BETTER THIS YEAR GAGAGAGAAAAA