After doing Project 365 (where you take at least a picture a day for a year) from 2008 through 2013 (cf), I decided to not continue it on into this year. Since Project 365 is what got me into photography in the first place, I feel like writing a little bit about why I didn't continue mine. Ultimately there are two major reasons for it.

The first reason is that I'd become more than a little bit tired of going out into grey days and bad weather in order to get a picture. Having done this for six years I think I've more than proved that I can do it if I want to; I just don't want to any more, especially since on bad days Project 365 easily turns into a grind. By the end of 2013 I was really tired of it and I think it showed in my photography on such days.

The other reason is that I want to genuinely experiment with some things, for example black and white photography (I have a vague plan to spend at least a month shooting only black & white in order to train myself to see good B&W pictures). The problem with real experimentation in the context of a Project 365 is that if you are really experimenting and trying to learn something new, you can fail totally and spectacularly and wind up with no usable pictures for your project for that day. Project 365 half-encourages experimentation, but it's safe experimentation, experimentation where you're pretty sure that you'll wind up with a usable picture even if it's not spectacular. I want to do more wild things than that (and I don't want to do two rounds of photography in a day, one focused on a Project 365 picture and then another on the real photography I want to do).

Also I have to admit that I've spent basically every day since January 1st 2008 carrying a camera around and thinking at least a little bit about photography, and I'd like to see what it's like to not do that (and especially what it's like to routinely bike places without my camera bag on my back). The results so far is that it's liberating and I sometimes miss taking pictures.

(I'll see how weird it feels to bike without a camera bag when the weather is actually biking weather.)