Photo-a-Day

About

Over the last decade, due to integration into mobile phones, digital cameras have become pervasive leading to many photo-a-day projects, an obvious exercise for anyone who likes to take and collect photographs. Yet despite the available tech and insignificant costs, the desire and will power of the photographer to take a photo every day for years, topped by a human fascination with seeing time at different speeds, photo-a-day memes are enjoyed as great works of timeless art throughout the world.

Picture-a-Day Videos

On January 11, 2000, at the age of 19, New York based photographer Noah Kalina began taking a photograph of himself everyday until July 31, 2006, 6 years later. The complete set of over 2300 photos where then placed into a timeline to fit an original piano score by his then-girlfriend, Carly Commando, resulting in this video uploaded to YouTube on August 27th, 2006 :

Coinciding with YouTube’s breakout moment (YouTube sold to Google for $1.65B in October, 2006) Noah’s video is arguably the most popular example of the “picture-a-day” video meme, seen over 16 million times on YouTube alone. With a full round of mainstream media attention and an active itinerary on the international conference circuits, Noah’s video eventually ended up parodied on The Simpsons, Season 19, Episode 9 entitled “Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind”:

Unbeknownst to Noah, Ahree Lee posted her picture-a-day video on August 11, 2006, just 16 days prior to Noah. Lee’s video spans 3 years:

In reaction to the sensation, “Phil takes a photo of himself everyday for 2 days”:

By September of 2006, Jonathan Keller revealed “Living My Life Faster”, a compilation of 8 years of his life.

Variations

The progression of a pregnancy:

The aging household pet:

The ever popular landscape example:

Most people are familiar with general time-lapse video, a process that has been used regularly in films since they first began. When created with an open-shutter videocamera, or a series of photographs, the process of editing happens by adding duplicate frames to extend time (slow motion) or by removing frames to decrease time (speed up).

IRL Compilations

Polaroid a Day

Pre-YouTube, the primary medium for photo-a-day works was photo sharing sites and in-real-life art galleries and museums. In 2008, Chris Higgins posted a contextual narrative at mental_floss about a series he found that had been dumped online for Jamie Livingston, a New York-based photographer who took a Polaroid picture every day for over 18 years until the day he died [Full photo gallery]

The Brown Sisters

Photographer Nicholas Nixon began “The Brown Sisters”, a one-a-year photo series that began in 1975 of his wife, Beverly (Bebe) Brown, and her three sisters, Heather, Mimi and Laurie. The work which was is still in progress, is shot on a traditional view camera has been shown in museums from the MOMA to the National Gallery of Art. In 2007, at year 33 -- a third of a century later -- the MOMA published a second edition book.