365 Project is over

Yep. I need to come clean. It’s over. I quit.

I could sit here and give you 400 reasons why I quit my 365 project this year: two kids under three, full time job, weddings to shoot, hurt my toe. But ultimately it came down to creativity.
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When I set out to do this project, I found a passion in myself that I’d not had for a while, photography had become automated in me and I’d hit cruise control on creativity.

When I started, I sought out locations, light, subject matter and found inspiration everywhere I turned. Then as the days became shorter and winter loomed, finding the time to shoot everyday became increasingly difficult.

There were one or two days, where I’d "tick the box" with a single image taken inside my house, of a bottle of beer – that kind of thing. I told myself, “that’s fine … you don’t have to go out and make some kind of iconic piece of art every time you leave the house.” But I found that this was happening more and more often.

What The 365 Project had given me by this point was a chance to redefine how I shoot. It transferred across to my weddings and commercial gigs and I found myself enjoying them more because of it. Seeing differently through the viewfinder, looking at light differently and knowing that sometimes you truly can make something from nothing – these are things I’d picked up by June.

What I’d also begun to learn was the importance of consistency and narrative in a body of work – BOOM. It hit me. Without a subject matter and with a goal to simply hit a shutter everyday, there’s no narrative, there’s no consistency, it’s purely just life where you can fit it in as you go about your day and it’s truly an honest reflection of your day, week, year.

This is what ultimately made me give it away. I was craving something with more meat on the bones, a project where I could spend a day shooting and still have nothing worth ever sharing, but something that was still laying the foundations of a house I want to build.
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The 365 Project helped me realise what I do want to shoot, how I want to shoot it and where my strengths and weaknesses are as a photographer. 2016 has probably been a year with the most growth in my work and I can thank this project for that – so I certainly don’t regret it.

I do feel bummed I couldn’t complete it, but at the same time I’m invigorated and inspired to work on new projects, projects that don’t demand that I spend time away from my children, or projects that make me feel guilty when I’m too sick to move.
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So that’s it! On to new things! One thing is for sure, I have a new admiration and respect for anyone who has completed a 365 Project of any kind!