How did you get started?


I get asked this question a lot and always end up talking about my self-imposed 365 Day Project. In 2014, I bought a Nikon 7200 and a couple of lenses, spending more money than I probably had available to spend. I had always had an interest in photography, but felt limited by my equipment and decided that I had to make the leap to a nicer camera in order to produce the images I knew I could. So now I had the equipment, what do I do with it?

Ten Thousand Hours


Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers is famous for popularizing the 10,000 hour rule, putting forth that 10,000 hours spent learning and practicing a thing is enough to make you a master of said thing. Now, realistically, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get to 10,000 hours within a year, but I decided a year-long project was going to be the best way for me to practice, learn, and make good use of my new equipment.

2015


On the first day of the next year, I took a picture of my brother outside of Amicci's in Baltimore, edited it and posted the very first of 365 images. I set a couple of rules for myself:

  • Photos had to be taken that day, edited, and posted before midnight
  • No Photoshop trickery, all of the shots I use for the project were at most color/light corrected, straightened and cropped

I stuck to the first rule for nearly all of the days. There were some that I was behind by an hour or two, or got the picture posted the next day, and I missed a couple of days when I was in jail (long story, but I caught up when I got home). As the year went on, I found myself struggling to find something interesting to photograph and was tempted to turn the lens towards myself, so I added a "one selfie a month" rule.