There are 365 days in a year. Multiple that times 5. Add 2 extra days for the 2 leap years that occurred between 2007 and 2012. Add it all together, and it comes to 1827 days. As of today, that’s how long I’ve been doing my One a Day Photo Project.

Perhaps even more significantly, after 5 years … 1827 days … of making sure I have taken at least one picture every day, I have decided to bid my One a Day project farewell.

It was back on August 28, 2007 that I first started the One a Day project. Chris had come up with the idea as a way to learn how to use his new (at that time) camera. He started his project exactly 5 years ago today, on August 27, 2007, actually. I thought it sounded like a fun idea, so I started taking daily photos the next day, on August 28, 2007.

The idea of the project was simple: take photos everyday, and choose one photo to be the pick of the day, i.e. the One a Day pick (OAD). Chris kept it up for 100 days, and then moved on to other things. I enjoyed it so much I have kept on doing it for a 5 full years. Wow – half a decade. Sounds like a lot when you put it like that, eh?

As I glanced today back through some of my photos from the project over the past few years, I realized the project has had an unintended benefit of providing a photographic journal to remind me of all the places we’ve visited — or lived — in the last 5 years, even though my OAD pick was sometimes more abstract or artsy than documentary. So, I get to re-live that through the photos, in addition to seeing all the photographic techniques I’ve attempted over the years.

Not all 1827 OADs are my best work, of course, and I’m of two minds about sharing all 1827 of them with everyone, although I may at some point. There’s a lot of experimentation that I tried, with the results of those kinds of things being a bit hit or miss at times. So it goes with experimentation, I suppose. Anyway, as a result, there are some days where the OAD pick isn’t all that exciting.

On the other hand, there are other days when I had the good fortune to take more than one interesting photo. But, according to the ground rules I decided to stick with, there can only be a single OAD choice for any given day, so the other good photos on a “good” day get put aside. And, again, according to the rules, they couldn’t be used to substitute for a substandard photo on another day.

For my next project I need to remember not to be such a stickler for the rules, I guess.

Anyway, thanks to Chris remembering to ask the question “Did you take any photos today?” everyday, there are photos for every one of the last 1827 days. Not all the ones from the last 2 weeks, nor all the ones from the last 3 months, have been completely sorted out yet, however. So, technically, I couldn’t show all 1827 picks today even I’d wanted to, since it will take me a little while longer to finish that up.

I think in many ways that’s what’s led to my deciding to go ahead and finally end the OAD project today. I still have fun taking photos every day. But, I find I have less interest in trying to make a better photo out of photos from an experiment that failed. It’s necessary to try when I have to pick a photo as the OAD pick, but less interesting when I’d rather work in my “digital darkroom” to refine the photos that have more potential. Maybe I have less patience than 5 years ago? I’d like to think I have a better percentage of photos with potential, but I’m not sure that’s really true, since I had both good and not so good ones each year over the past 5 years.

However, it was clear to me last month that the time has come to move on. But I couldn’t resist holding out to make it to 1827 – a 5 year milestone seemed a good target.

One of the joys of the project has been that it’s given me the motivation to do more photography, and to try new and different things. The OAD Project has also made me feel more comfortable using a wide variety of cameras over the years, and I’m additionally learning a lot more about doing adjustments to the photos in that “digital darkroom” on my computer. I’ve still got a lot to learn, and lots of things that I’d like to try with photography, so it’s not that I’m leaving photography aside by any means. I’ll still be walking around every day with a camera in my bag … it’s just that if I don’t happen to get a great shot on any given day, there won’t be the pressure that something has to be the OAD pick of the day. And that, I guess is the main consequence of ending the OAD project today.

Now, as I said, I do hope to do something with all 1827 photos, at some point, just to bring a proper closure to the project. Maybe I’ll collect my favorites from the 5 years together, perhaps in a book (like I did for the first year’s OAD picks), maybe put them in a slideshow with music (like I did for the first 2 years). I haven’t quite decided yet. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, it’s with a hint of sadness, but also a bit of excitement that I look forward to starting a new long-term photography project of some sort. I have a number of ideas, nothing definite yet. I’ll keep you posted on that, too.

I have vowed to make it easier to remember the starting date of my next big project by picking a more normal start date, e.g. the first of the month … or first of the year. It would make things a bit easier and a bit more expected.

But then again, doing the unexpected is what I love to do most. After all, I certainly never expected to keep the One a Day project going for 1827 days.

*****

Since I’m not going post all 1827 photos any time soon, I thought we could mark the end of the project with a look at the first and last photo from each year. See what you think, keeping in mind that the first day and the last day were rarely taken as special photos of that year, and not all of them would make a highlights reel from the project: