Monday, October 12, 2009

The Concept

I was avoiding study one night when I came across this article via the magic of StumbleUpon. I'll provide a link before I continue for anyone interested - the basic gist of it is that this man took one Polaroid photo a day for 18 years until his death, racking up over 6,000 photos.

See here: "He Took A Polaroid Every Day, Until The Day He Died."

The thought that so much can be learnt about one's life, not only for an audience but for the photographers themselves, through the simple act of just capturing every day in an image astounded me. The highs, and the lows. As some of you may know, I'm a sucker for nostalgia, and this just seemed like an activity I'd be interested to see the results of personally, though anyone else is welcome to read along for the ride as I go.

However, one photo a day for the rest of my life seemed incredibly daunting, but I was then reminded of an exhibition I saw a year or two ago with my sister. There was a girl who took one Polaroid photo a day, no more than that regardless of if she found a better shot after taking that day's already, and continued this process for exactly one full year. The idea was that each day she would take a picture of something that inspired her, or captured the moment. After the 365 days she collected all the Polaroids, gave each a title, and displayed them in a gallery space in chronological order, essentially chronicling a year of her existence.

Though still daunting, one photo a day for a year seemed far less intimidating than the rest of my life, so I thought I'd give it a go and see how far I make it even if I don't ever reach the full year. I just want to be able to look back one day and see all the stuff I've done, all the places I've been and all the things I've seen. I just wanted to record my life for a year - not necessarily shots that are 'inspirational' or anything like that, but merely chronicling my own existence for a period of time and what has intrigued me or personally applied to that day, even if not all viewers may necessarily understand the message of each Polaroid themselves.

I must make one quick disclaimer, however; I realise these photos are all taken with a digital camera, but I've chosen to apply a photoshop action to each to create the illusion of each being taken on a Polaroid. Considering how expensive Polaroid film is nowadays I just didn't think it'd exactly be viable, but I loved the nostalgic feel Polaroids give, so I figured I'd do the next best thing and generate them on the computer.

Well, now that everything has been explained, let the stream of Polaroid memories begin...

3 comments:

  1. Hey this is pretty cool! I like the idea and sounds like something i would do if i had a camera ><. and i like polaroids too. i like the whole instant film-ness of it. they need to bring it back! its kind of a reaction against digital media... and im following :D

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  2. Im interested to see how this turns out, it sounds like a good idea

    -KT3

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  3. ...Ok how did people find this blog hahaha. I wasn't expecting to show anyone really until I had a week or two of photos up. :P

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