In 2010 I started a fully ambitious, and likely unrealistic, project to photograph something every day for 10 years. The audacity.
Now, of course, there were rules. They had to be taken by my DSLR at the time since I didn’t consider whatever flip phone or trending Blackberry to meet the parameters of my vision. I had to upload within 24 hours, like a journal entry for a non-existent audience. However looking back, I was painfully lacking in creative direction because my Blackberry Storm would have taken fire portraits.
I tagged all of the photos with a 3652 Days hashtag on Flickr.
I made it to 265 days.
While most people call that a failure, Giannis Antetokounmpo, the “Greek Freak” from the Milwaukee Bucks, would have called my very short-lived undertaking a journey to success. I needed a Giannis back in 2010.
I started thinking about this project recently as I thought about this year’s goals and my previous commitments that I didn’t fulfill. Looking back, it felt sobering and rejuvenating to revisit old work and old projects I didn’t finish. The idea of setting out with so much naivete, hope, and fervor. To say I’m going to try and do this thing for this long in this way, while not coming even close to completing it, kind of made me smile. I tried to retrieve any memory of why I stopped but I truly don’t remember.
Was the burden of photographing every day too much back then? Did I simply not get enough traction? Did I experience a creative flame burnout? Did I get bored? Did no one care?
When I look back at these photos, I see a younger self enamored with all of the new things I was experiencing at the time: someone still looking for a technical voice and trying to understand where he fits in. A guy meandering around the world, likely terrified and anxious about “making it”, but relying on his cloak of a camera to hide whatever insecurities, slow everything around him down, and take it in one image at a time.
This photo project started during an era in my life when I was only five years removed from leaving a home I’d known for 25 years. This was a time when I was engaged to my wife Anna (we’re about to celebrate anniversary number 13) and starting to wrap my head around that next big milestone in life. This was a time when I was traveling across the United States, living in different cities, and recording stories for StoryCorps, feeling over-the-top uncomfortable every six weeks because I had to figure out how to talk to strangers eight hours a day, five days a week, with a smile. This was a time when I was in between shedding whatever previous skin I had and evolving into something new, a bit foreign, but exciting. I think this was the time I started transcending from photographer to more of the ideal visual storyteller I’ve always wanted to become.
Some of the photos capture other young people emerging into a greater version of themselves. There are photos of my friend Nadia who has since won a Pulitzer Prize. There’s a photo of my former boss Jenna who launched and sold one of the most successful podcasting companies in the world, Pineapple Street Studios. Then there’s my friend Mario who has since gotten his PhD, written a book, and is likely on the path to academic stardom. There’s a cool portrait of Anna and my friends Judy and Beatriz, the latter going on to create Dada.art, one of the coolest art communities out there (Judy also wrote a novel). And my high school bud Juan who went on to manage Soho House LA and NYC, and now schlepps high-end tequila with the grandsons of Don Julio. And, of course, scenes with my wife – in our place in Mexico City, in LA, in Vancouver, in New York City – gearing up for a life we could never imagine, a successful business woman herself and out-of-this-world mother.
Sample from that project
And then there are photos I’m so happy to have but cripple me. There is my Uncle Francisco, Panchito, on his 70th birthday, only five years later he would pass away from cancer. Then there’s my father, at a bowling alley, on his 65th birthday, looking pensive, and doing that thing he did with his arthritic hands, an ailment that never stopped him from cruising to a 220 in 10 frames. He still had so much life, but this photo doesn’t tell us he’s only nine years away from his death.
I have pictures of new cities I was visiting, beautiful dinners with friends, and encounters with my young nephew (now a senior in college), all in a collection of photographs trying to simply catalog the story of my developing and evolving eyes. But they aren’t on a phone, lost in a sea of quick snaps and selfies. They had, and still have, purpose. They were an exercise. They were part of something greater than their single image. They are a fabric of existence, informing anyone who cared to look closer that a larger moment in one little insignificant human’s life was taking place. This was a project about intention.
A new project
I’m not sure when I’ll complete this specific newsletter, but at this exact time, it’s 9:07 pm on Wednesday, January 10th, 2024.
Last Friday I dropped off four rolls of 120 film and one roll of 35mm in a box at one of my favorite coffee shops in Seattle, Porchlight Coffee & Records. It’s a peculiar practice I undergo a few days a month. I drive down and park between this coffee shop and my favorite magazine store, Big Little News. I circle on foot to take a few street shots, agonizing or what I missed and excited about what I may have gotten. Usually stuff like the photo below (I love it).
Light will fade. A drizzle will start. I realize no one else is within my vicinity. There’s no trash to photograph. The graffiti is flat in the grey. So I head over to Porchlight with my film, chat with the owner, grab a cappuccino, and start filling out a white envelope with the date, my name, my email, my phone number, and whether I want the film developer to throw my negatives away or mail them to me for $5. I always check off the $5 box.
But last week, two of the rolls held six days’ worth of portraits from my Mamiya RZ67. At some time after Christmas, I decided I would try and take a portrait a day with my medium format camera, mainly for technical practice, muscle memory development, and refining of quirks on a camera that is only one year younger than me.
Cranky little beast.
But like my 265 exercises in 2010, I’m becoming obsessed with this idea of intention, and more that a creative life fueled by intention can’t ever be bad. It’s the flippancy of our daily lives that we have to combat, and nothing feels more combative than staring at a fugly-ass day with unrestrained focus and intention, rebelliously punching drudgery in the face by doing some intentional shit.
However, on day 10, I’m already a little frustrated. As weekdays hit, I’m typically at my desk, working on marketing decks and strategies, taking calls from corporate partners, and managing a great team of doers. When it’s time to take pictures, the light is gone, rushing toward the horizon like rainwater to a gutter. Sometimes I stare out of my window, longing like I’ve just lost a puppy, and mutter “fuck.” But light is anywhere if you look hard enough. It’s then that I have been grabbing this 41-year-old camera with its 27-year-old lens and bring together my novice hack of gathering a one-year-old transmitter to tell this cranky tank to make my strobes fire when my finger clicks go.
And, yet, all of the turmoil feels worth it because I think, I hope, there will be something to catalog in the end.
Photography is a bizarre medium. You’re aiming to capture a present that is fleeting minute by minute, struggling to understand a light that is bouncing off of every wall like a toddler, and trying with all of your sense of urgency and wonder to bottle it somehow. Yet, time and time again, it all feels so exhilarating, new, fresh, and wild, like splashing into a cold pool. After just a little while, everything starts to feel a little warmer, and calmer, and you start to float, daydreaming about what a wonder all of this life is.
A few upcoming ideas I’m thinking about:
Portraits of eyes
Portraits with depth and distance
Portraits of specific features like hands, freckles, or ears.
Portraits with people while they are making a wish.
Interested in collaborating or participating? Hit me up. I hope your year is starting as you’d hoped and that your intention is full throttle.
Thanks for being here. Happy Sunday.
Man, that dinner in Mexico City feels like forever ago. I can’t believe you didn’t take me to Porchlight and Big Little News. And yes, I’ll forever be your freckled hand muse. ;)