The ones who follow me on Instagram know that in 2019 I gave myself a challenge – to post a photo a day, every day, for the entire year. It is the 21st of January of 2020 and it is time to review those photos and pick my favourites of the bunch. First I must come clean – I didn’t make it. In the year I posted roughly 335 photos, so I missed the 365 photos by roughly a month’s worth of photos. But I am still incredibly proud of myself.
It takes commitment to post everyday
Before I get to listing my absolute favourites I thought I would share some thoughts I have now that the year is over. Here goes:
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The time commitment
It really took an incredible amount of my energy, mental strength and will to complete the year. The amount of time it went to photographing places and editing them I knew as that I would do anyway but now I added the Instagram aspect to it. Even though it doesnt take a lot to post a photograph but I wanted it to feel right and I wanted to post the right photos that felt real. And that auditing process and the then followed captioning came as a surprise.
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The follower-neurosis
After the first month or so I started to really struggle with the follower obsession and the “look”. What photos should I post today, does it look right, will people like it. I hadn’t cared when I didn’t post regularly but now that I posted almost everyday I suddenly cared. And shedding that obsession was hard. As it is easy to say that “I don’t care what people think, I will do me” but living it, that’s the hard part.
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The joy the challenge gave me
Last January I could not have anticipated how much joy this little silly challenge would bring to my life. I have seen incredible places and had personal high’s, like for example when Visit Finland shared my photo.I started walking around Helsinki, wanted to go to new areas and suburbs and see the little things just to take photos. My boss even started asking if I am “taking my camera for a walk” over the weekend. I walked for over 2000 kilometres last year and much of it is thanks to this challenge as it got my creative juices flowing and gave me the push to go out there and capture more moments.
And there it is, my three after-thoughts of my challenge. I will keep posting to Instagram as I am still walking around and have a lot of Helsinki to see but I will not stress about daily posting this year. I do think I will do this again though one day, in some other form or with another medium. Let’s see.
My 20 favourite photograph’s from my daily photochallenge of 2019
These ones are actually in chronological order. You can see how my storytelling progresses and evolves as the year moves further.
Tell me your favourite in the comments below!
Which one was your favourite photo?
Tell me in the comments!
Looking for more pretty photos?
Check out these:
Photos from hiking in Garden of the Gods
Photos from a safari in Maasai Mara, Kenya
Photographs: New Years in Rome, Vatican