What a journey. One year, one cup a day. Almost. In some months I took only every other day a photo of a cup and never got every day of a month. But I made it to the end of 2013 with every month filled with at least 16 cup photos. I made it through the entire year with this challenge and that makes me so proud.
It’s so fun looking at all these pictures of different cups at different times of day and different places. But I still know exactly, when I took which photo, and that is so exciting. It’s a documentation of my life in cups. I can’t wait to see these pictures printed in a photobook.
All photos were taken with my iPhone 4s and edited with my favorite apps VSCOcam, Afterlight, Lo-Mob, Picfx and Snapseed. Although I have countless more apps on my iPhone, these are the ones I use regularly. I treasure the filters of VSCOcam, Lo-Mob, Picfx and Afterlight. Especially the moody ones with warm light are my favorites (for example F2 on VSCOcam). Snapseed and VSCOcam I used to change the exposure, temperature and contrast and cut the photos. Afterlight is perfect, when you want to downscale your picture before the upload. This way they are much smaller in size, load faster and don’t have the original size, so it’s somehow safe from copycats.
Using my iPhone and not my big camera made it easy to take photos and edit them on the go. I had my camera with me everywhere and everytime, ready to capture the photo of the day. And in the same move post them to Tumblr through their easy app. Because I uploaded some pictures at the same day, I could have used the calendar settings to post them on an earlier date, on the day of the photo. But I found this option too late. But maybe you can lern from this.
If you consider a 365 challenge: just do it. You will lern so much. And even if you struggle because you left out some days, don’t let yourself discourage you. This happens. Everyone has some days, when the motivation is low or there is too much going on and you just forget your project. And this can naturally go on for some days, but after that you will have time again and then just go on with your project, your challenge. Just pretend as nothing has happened and if you did the last project thing a day ago. Don’t let a pause discourage you. It’s such an amazing feeling reaching the end of the year and knowing: I did it! I made it through 365 days. That you didn’t get every day doesn’t matter.
And most important: Don’t overextend yourself. It will do nothing good, if you for example try to craft every day an entire project, if you have to give up after a few days or weeks, because you just don’t have the time. Make little steps like ‘crafting everyday’ a goal, not an entire project. Just a step further, and if it’s just a small one, like folding three corners of an origami star or just one origami figure or preparing the background of a picture. Every step, and if it’s this small, counts as crafting.
Hopefully you are inspired and motivated to make your own 365 challenge. I loved mine and will always be happy, when I’ll look at these photos and think about what I’ve accomplished.
PS: Here you can read, what I’ve wrote in between this challenging year Two photo challenges, one year of cups: the first month and half time at my 365 photo challenge.
