One Thousand Days

I’ve now taken a photo every single day for a thousand days. The photos themselves aren’t necessarily extraordinary—some are of simple, everyday moments, others of things I barely remember—but hitting the thousand-day mark feels significant. It’s not about the content of the pictures, but the consistency over time.

A milestone like this seems worth acknowledging.

I don’t think I’ve ever consciously done anything for 1000 days in a row. I know Self-help books like Atomic Habits talk about forming a habit in just 30 days, but I’m not convinced.

I still need the daily reminder in my to-do list app. Every day, without fail, it pings me: “Take your photo.” Without it, I’d forget. Or worse, I just wouldn’t bother.

Even after 1000 days, the habit hasn’t become automatic—it’s still an effort, however small.

I’ve always taken photos, and I’ve even been paid to take some of them. At some point during the post 2008 smartphone era I just … stopped carrying a camera with me. Relying instead on the camera I had with me to take a snap and fix a memory.

It was after a holiday back in 2021, that I first mentioned I was thinking about doing a photo-a-day project.

An “excuse to remember how to take photos” and develop my skills as a photographer. 2 years, 8 months, 26 days later; maybe it’s time to review.

You’d think that after taking a thousand photos, I’d have improved?

I spent an hour this morning scrolling through my Google Photos, looking at individual photos and in aggregate. I think that I’ve captured some absolute bangers over the past couple of years – which I’m using to illustrate this post. But scrolling though the whole project chronologically I notice that at some point last year – after about 500 days – a style began to cohere.

This isn’t to say I wasn’t taking some ‘good photos’ in 2022; it’s that as time went on, everything sees to feel more collectively unified – a style – things that are to my taste.

More recently photos feel like they were taken by the same photographer. They reflect a consistent aesthetic: the framing, proportions, colours, balance are all similar. And this feeling of coherence seems to diminish as I look further back back at earlier stages of the project.

Most of my photos have been taken around Surbiton, Kingston, and the surrounding areas of Southwest London where I live. You’d think there’s only so much you can photograph on the same streets, between your house and the supermarket day after day, month after month – but you’d be surprised.

Stepping out into the world every day with the goal of taking a photo has completely transformed how I see my environment. My ‘eye’ has developed. Each day for a short time I need to be actively engaged with my surroundings. Looking up and out at the world rather than looking my phone.

Each day requires an act of noticing. The seemingly mundane environment around me is transformed into something interesting when seen through the lens of a camera.

The other day I realised that that both the photos above wouldn’t be possible to take now. Trees and bushes have grown in – the landscape has moved on. I’ve become quite grateful to be aware of the ongoingness of my neighbourhood around me. These daily acts of noticing have produced a quiet satisfaction.

I’ve been putting my photos online since I started the project. This Blog, on my Instagram, and Flickr. I also save them to GooglePhotos, and to my journaling app.

I’ve written about how much I appreciate Day One’s “On This Day” feature before, but I want to mention it again.

Having a photo from a year or two years ago—pop up every day amidst my diary entries provides me with a complex sense of context.

I have SDAM so I find it very interesting to be reminded where I was, and what I was doing on this day back in time. It brings me a great deal of pleasure.

There’s a relentless momentum that builds from doing something every single day, and within it can be found the rhythm to the year.

For instance, the magical few days where autumn sunlight that bounces off the windows across the road, casting deep shadows across our living room wall. I’ve documented this phenomenon twice now – literally on the same day. It happens every year, and I know I’ll photograph it again I’m sure. This predictability, this regularity, makes me feel connected to the cycle of the year and to the home that I live in.

One thing I’ve consciously decided for this project its that I don’t take photos of people (with one exception – weddings). As an early-adopting millennial with a digital camera and Facebook when you still needed a university address, I learnt some lessons. And one of them is that you simply don’t post photos of people on the Internet without their permission. It’s invasive, you have to get enthusiastic consent.

Even though I think I’m quite a good portrait photographer – I did a course once, and I have so many wonderful photos of my friends. I also like to print them—often for special events like 40th birthdays.

They just don’t need to be on the Internet.

Now, back to the streak. One thousand days – a colossal amount of effort, a huge commitment. When I got back from Thailand in January, I told a friend – who is a professional photographer – that I might stop after reaching 1,000 days, because of the effort involved. But now that I’ve hit that number, I want to keep going.

At least to the end of the year.

Part of me thinks it’s easier to keep going than to stop. Three years feels like a long time. But doing four??? For some reason there’s a huge psychological gap between 1,095 photos and 1,460.

I have to remember that I’m only doing this for myself—motivated by my own sense of satisfaction.

Next year, I might introduce more constraints to the project—maybe a year of shooting exclusively in black and white?

Or perhaps literally limiting myself to one photo a day – first photo, best photo. But I turn 40 next year, and hopefully all being well, it should be an exciting year.

I’m not sure I want to remember the year in greysacle.

Speaking of first photo, best photo. One of the biggest differences between 2022 and 2024 is that I’m taking way less shots it takes to get to the “photo of the day.”

This, I think, is a sign that my eye has improved. Intuition. Just the other day, I only took two photos all day — both practically identical—but one just felt more right than the other. Back in 2022, I would have taken five or six photos before choosing between them.

Lastly, Photo-a-day projects were incredibly popular in the early days of Instagram and social media. There was this explosion of creativity, and even apps dedicated to photo 365’s. But I see fewer people maintaining these kinds of practices – at least in my social circle.

One MVP is Tobias Revell over on his Instagram. He makes a time-lapse of himself most mornings working at his computer, paired with a note about what’s going on in his life and the time his alarm went off. I love waking up to it every morning. The effort involved must be enormous, even more than a 365 like mine.

Anyways. I would like encourage anyone reading this to start a 365 project. There’s something so incredibly motivating about the momentum you build, the satisfaction of doing some self-motivated creative act every day without fail.