Categories
Photography

The Impossible Year

In 2010 I decided I was going to try to make a point to create and publish something every day. Whether it was a photograph on Flickr or a blog post here or elsewhere, it would be my own, personal accomplishment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t even come close. I could make excuses, but I simply didn’t succeed.

With the advent of Instagram in 2011, it became increasingly easy to do the “one photograph a day” type of project. As much as I’m a fan of digital photography, it takes very little effort to shoot a single image daily on your phone, and that takes all the fire out of it.

So I thought: “Go big or go home.”

At some point, I heard about the work of Jamie Livingston, who took one Polaroid photo a day from 1979 to his death in 1997.

Unfortunately, Polaroid ceased making new instant film in 2008, which seemingly ruled out that idea. At some point, though, I miraculously stumbled onto a group called The Impossible Project. ‘TIP’ is a group of Polaroid enthusiasts who set out to reverse engineer the good old stuff and are now producing new instant film compatible with Polaroid cameras.

Armed with film and a “new” camera, I have set out to shoot and publish one photograph a day using Impossible Project film. With that in mind, I’ve entitled my experiment “The Impossible Year” for a few reasons. The first and most obvious would be in tribute to the company making this possible. Secondly would be sorta tongue in cheek with myself as 2012 is the year the “world is supposed to end” according to the Mayan calendar, which if the world were actually to end, would certainly mean the end of my project. Lastly, it’s a challenge to myself not to fail, saying that my year would be “impossible” states that at some point, I might drop the ball and fail, thus pushing me to prove myself wrong.

So yeah enough BS. I didn’t write anything about this back in January because I wanted to make sure I’d be able to get at least one month under my belt. Now here we are, March is almost over, so it’s safe to say I’m going to keep at it. Please take a moment to look through the photos and feel free to leave comments or ask questions. Thanks!

Categories
Business General Photography Technology Travels

Grid Meets Road – World Travel in the Digital Age

On the 19th of September, I will embark on an adventure that will almost certainly change my life. I am heading overseas to Europe to travel full time until February of next year.

Along my way, I will use digital devices and social media tools to explore and find what to do in each respective city. I will document my experience on this blog, Flickr, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, FourSquare, Gowalla, Tumblr & maybe even YouTube. I will attempt to find places to say either with friends from these services or using sites like CouchSurfing and AirBnB.

The idea is to “crowdsource” my adventure, asking for you, the reader, to supply me with input as to where to go, what to see, etc.

My end goal will be not just to explore the world but to really test the limits of our global communications network, the so-called “global community.” Can we, “the internet,” actually supply what one person needs to know on such an adventure? How connected are we really through these services, and how easy (or hard) is it to maintain the relationships with your loved ones while traveling full time?

I have also submitted a panel to next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival and hope to share the results of my trip with you there and eventually publish a book on the experience.

I will share more details about the trip as we get closer to leaving, but for now, I could use your help.

Please do me a favor and vote for my panel to be accepted to SXSW… the voting period ends tonight, Friday the 2nd, at midnight. You can do that here.

Also, if you’re interested, you can donate to my experiment as well here.

Anyone who donates me any money (it doesn’t matter how much or little) will have their name on a slide at our SXSW presentation should it be accepted. Thanks!