Today is Day 320 in my adventure of taking a picture a day for a whole year. Mathematically that means I’m 45 days away from completing my goal. For me this has been a great learning experience and more of a challenge then I thought it would be. There were somedays that just seem to beg for the camera to be taken out of the case and taken on some grand adventure to fins those things worth taking a picture while there were other days that taking a picture was an after thought once everything else the day had to hold had ran it’s course.
I learned to not get disappointed and not compare one day’s picture to another because each day was different. Each day had it’s challenge. Each day had it’s different sunsets and weather to case that sunset was my choice to make. Each day had it’s unexpected and it’s planned moments but when to take a picture was always different.
This has challenged my commitment level each day, even though taking a picture is a small commitment it has a lasting effect on me knowing that I can do something everyday for a whole year. Not just something like brush my teeth or take a shower, but something out of the ordinary, something that stretched my creativity and also challenged me to think more outside the box.
There were days I would think for hours about how I wanted to take a certain picture or catch an idea or message through a picture and then do it. There were days that I would create something to go in the picture and if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted I would create something else. (This happened a lot actually.) There were days were ideas came fast and quick. The pictures taken could be anywhere from on average 70 to 150 pictures on a good day or as low as 10. Taking a picture a day opened my eyes literally to a passion that I had dabbled in as a kid but hadn’t really considered pursuing until I took on this challenge.
There is just something about capturing a moment, or framing a day, or a place, a time, an idea, a message or just anything. For me these pictures have created memories for me. I can tell stories about most of the days from the last year because of these pictures. I like the challenge, I like to be challenged, especially when that challenge deals with being creative.
As a little part of this challenge to myself I wanted to explore a little more about myself and getting to know me for me. I know that sounds a little weird, but one of the questions that has come out of this past year in a number of ways is how can I be more honest with myself and others? So why not through pictures. Many of these picture have captured little parts of me, my passion, my heart, my thoughts, my feelings, emotions, travels, stories and life.
I have taken over 120 self portraits over the past year to help me understand me. To catch a moment and look back and try to think through what I was thinking through. The self portraits are not because I want attention on me, or need everyone to remember what I look like, no the self portraits tell me stories. As if my own face is telling me my story over the past year. I think I read somewhere or I’m making this up that a photographer can look at a picture and always see beyond it, in it and though it, they were in that moment so the story is there for them. The rest of the world my not understand the story but they get it. Now I get it…
One of the pictures that has come to mean a lot to me from the project 365 and is one of the self portraits is this picture I took while sitting in a bed up against the wall in a room that my friend David and I used as our teachers lounge while I was teaching at the International school in Carpina, Brazil. The picture was taken in the midst of my trying to stop crying because for two hours I had the worst homesickness of my entire twenty-two years of life. In that moment I had been telling God he had to carry me through the rest of my time in Brazil. I was tired and worn out and I had three months to go. In that moment I knew all my tears were not in vain, I realized how human I was, how much I needed God’s strength and how deeply I really wanted to learn how to love the students I was teaching. That for me was one of the defining moments in that trip.
Another portrait that I really like is this one where I’m looking through a magnifying glass. I remember finding the magnifying glass somewhere in the school after I had gotten done teaching for the day. But in the picture you can see parts of the sky behind it. I wasn’t planning on catching the sky but it happened. The picture is a reminder to me of how much I love to adventure and find new things, to find the unexpected and to look close at life. Life interests me more than any other subject. How we live each and every day of our lives must be examined, experienced, and sometimes looked at through a magnifying glass.
One of the cool self portraits that I took came when I discover my interest in lighting. With different lighting you can create different effects on the face or object. I don’t think I really thought about lighting until I started taking pictures each day. This one picture basically was just my face pressed as close to the light bulb as I could without touching it and seeing if I could get half my face to disappear. It took me a while but it worked. So I have the picture to remember.
There are obviously many different pictures that I have taken over the past year that are “self portraits” and each tells a story but to share them all would make for a really long blog post that even I might not want to read. However, the last one that I want to share is a picture that I titled “Justice” it’s a self portrait that I took in response to human trafficking and the sex trade. I feel strongly about these things and finding justice for those who cannot speak for themselves. To me the pictures says a lot with saying very little.
Through project 365 I have been able to learn a lot about my self and my world. I believe many people assume they know themselves and they assume they know the world around them but I challenge them to take a picture, to really be honest with themselves, to look deep into their own life. To take a real honest look at the world, did you know that there are human’s enslaved right here in the USA, did you know that most of our youth, the next Generation are broken and longing for healing, did you know that most people go through life without meaning or purpose, did you know that your face tells a story every single day.
You are telling a story… Remembering your story, understanding yourself honestly will help you tell that story.
Even when this project is over I hope to keep learning and being challenged to become a better photographer and help people tell their stories.
How will you live?
How will you tell your story?
-Caleb Ross Hunter
The Adventure of Dragon Hunting 