10 years ago today I started a 365 project where I shot and posted a photo every day at 6:30 a.m. It was very trendy at the time and looking back at the photos is pretty fun.

It’s a mix of my usual style of outdoor photography mixed with early HDR and iPhone photos with funky filters and grungy frames. Check out the above photo, my first shot of the project made with an iPhone 4s and all grunged up. You can see all of the photos from the project on (Yikes!) Tumblr: https://ecophotography.tumblr.com/ though most of the photos are also on my website here: https://ecophotography.photoshelter.com/gallery/0630/G0000C1UifihL1TA.

I managed to only miss about 15 days over the course of the year before it all ended about a week short of the one-year anniversary when we had a fire in my house. (no one was hurt, but it was a stressful couple of months in the aftermath!)

The project was great for forcing me to shoot very day and to look for photos even in bad weather or less than exciting locations.

It was also a great project for experimenting with different ideas, gear, techniques, etc. Some of which I still use (and some I definitely left in the past.) I wrote a wrap-up of the project in March 2013, which you can see here if you’re interested: https://ecophotography.com/connecting-to-place/

What’s interesting to me is the big difference between the photos I shot with traditional gear, often while on assignment, and the photos I shot with my phone just quickly trying to find something of interest near home so I could check my photo off my to-do list for the day. My traditional work seems classic and timeless to me, while the more impromptu photos are definitely of their time, but often more whimsical and relaxed.

On to the next decade…

Cheers!

-Jerry