Loxosceles

Here are the results from my first month on the photo-a-day diet, presented now as sort of late birthday gift for myself.

I'm really enjoying this project. The fifth day of the project was a Sunday, and I had slept in, and as I headed out the door to take the dog out, I remembered the rule to always have your camera with you. "Even when I take the dog out to poop?" I thought. What could it hurt? So I took the camera, and took my best-ever shot of a running greyhound.

Looking at my month, I remember a lot more interesting things than in my usual retrospective: "Where did november go?" or "I haven't done anything interesting lately". I went dancing, I learned to make soap, I voted, I traveled, Chris printed his first Hello World on his development hardware, I saw Dan Savage, I discovered a great bread recipe, I helped to make an almost-prizewinning chili, I learned to use my narrow-hemmer, I saw a surprise rainbow at sunset, I went to the glass museum and saw a live performance of the New World Symphony; we had our first snow of the year, and I tried my first camera toss.

A lot of the pictures have their own little stories, like when I climbed a staircase in the Willard Straight ballroom to take that day's photo. Suddenly people looked up and realized there was actually structure to a wall where they thought there was only a lot of wood paneling and molding. I had a small crowd follow me up there to check out the view.

I think I may understand historians' interest in diaries: day-to-day happenings, even if they're boring to the person they happen to, can add up to be something worth reading about. Decades or centuries later, they're very valuable; the things that seemed boring at the time (how you spent your day, where you lived, what chores you had, what news you paid attention to) are exotic and fascinating.

I'm a fan of old photos that show the cars of the day, the clothing, the architecture, the styles of advertising. Somebody has to take those photos! How often have you stopped to snap a random everyday view of your favorite street corner? Now, for contrast, what's your reaction to an old postcard showing a familiar street corner as it appeared 100 years ago?

I found myself wondering recently why I sign myself up for seemingly needless obligations: like making all my own clothes, or only running free software, or not eating meat, or taking a photo every day no matter what. Once I switched the keys on my computer to the Dvorak rather than the Qwerty layout, and used it that way for a year.

Mainly, it's because I'm curious to see what it's like to live under that obligation, and what I might learn from it. Simply having a camera in your hand changes how you look at the world; making yourself look at the world in that unusual way, once a day ("what here is worth taking a photo of?") leads to all sorts of intriguing trains of thought. Eating vegetarian raises interesting questions about what's on the menu and why. Swearing off purchased clothing really makes you think about consumerism and commerce - how can I support this charity except by buying yet another shirt sewn in a sweatshop in China? What would I have to do to not support those sweatshops? (Somehow I doubt buying fabric from JoAnn's is the answer.)

Meanwhile, plenty of people don't own cameras, and don't have much choice in what they eat or what they wear - so this is still sort of a rich person's parlor game. If you want to deprive yourself of something for fun and profit, but where the profit goes to someone who actually needs it, try the Knitters Without Borders Challenge. (You don't have to be a knitter.) It goes like this: for a week, or the time period of your choice, stop buying unnecessary stuff. At the end of the week, take the money you saved, and send it to Doctors Without Borders. (They won a Nobel Peace Prize. They're legit.)

And when you're done with that, pick up your camera, or not, and start thinking about the world around you.