I took a picture every day with a Fuji Instax Mini 90 camera throughout 2018.
My self-imposed conditions were simple: take only one a day and use it no matter what. I mostly stuck to this, though due to both technical and user failures on some occasions the resulting image was just so bad, I gave myself some slack and took more than one.
Here’s what I learned:
- A daily act of creation is its own reward: Doing something creative deliberately every day requires discipline, but also creates its own universe in a way and adds a little drop of meaning into every day.
- Casual, intimate moments with friends and family mattered most: I sought and found something (almost) every day that stood out as the most important part of that day. While the vast majority of the moments I chose to snap the shot are just mundane, everyday bits of my normal life, I realized that these moments were, in fact, the ones I cared the most about. While I was busier than ever in my professional life photographing CEOs and executive portraits, big splashy events, several conferences (and the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau on three separate occasions), on most of these days my photo-of-the-day was a picture of my daughter hugging her new puppy, or hanging out with friends and family having a drink and a laugh.
- Image quality doesn’t always matter: while I often found myself frustrated by the extreme limitations of the instant print medium, I loved the authenticity of the print in my hand and the nostalgic reminder of what photography started as: a way to steal a moment of time and put it in your pocket as a memory you could keep and return to whenever you wanted to.
- Polaroid has huge name brand recognition!: No matter how many times I told people I was shooting with a Fuji Instax Mini 90 (and no this was not a sponsored project at all though the product links are Amazon Affiliate links which will pay me a small commission if you buy through them), almost 99% of the time people would reply with a comment about what a cool idea it was to take a Polaroid a day.
- Puppies are addictive: I finally understand why the internet is drowning in pet photos and videos. (I took A LOT of photos of my new puppy and my daughter!)
- I am very lucky and have a good life: I spent time with many friends, family and was able to travel a fair bit this year to Paris, Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Quebec’s Saguenay region, Toronto, Brooklyn (a reunion with a good friend and too many martinis-see Aug 24), Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia, Tremblant, Florida and many fun nights with friends here in my favourite city in the world, Montreal. While I don’t keep a gratitude journal, this project was like a photo diary of my life and in retrospect it shows how much I have to be grateful for.
Why did I do it?
When I started I didn’t really have any real reason other than wanting to have some kind of creative project to work on that was one step removed from my regular life.
Having completed it, I am happy to have it done, but also happy I did it. I think there is value in the daily practice of anything – whether a piece of creative writing, a drawing, a photo like I did, a doodle, an idea, a blog post or whatever you decide matters to you. If you are stuck creatively or wanting to start a new career as an artist, or writer it can give you the discipline you need to break out of entropy and ultimately it will carry you on its own momentum.
Here’s a fun and inspiring video about the impact a daily project had on an artist who decided to do a drawing a day:
My advice to anyone who’s currently embarking on a 30-day challenge, or an every day project is to stick with it. Cut yourself some slack if you miss a day, but make it up (I admit to plugging in two or three photos in this series that were fill-ins for days I forgot to take a shot). Both the doing-it and the finishing-it parts are important. Share what you learn, and if you’re feeling brave enough, share daily as you do it. I chose not to post daily as frankly, I felt that so many of the photos I took were so bad that it would be boring as a daily stream, but in their entirety they have a kind of raw, genuine quality that I enjoy and hope you do as well.
To see the whole year series click on the image below:
Happy 2019!
