A photo a day Challenge
So this is a bit of a personal post alert! Last year I decided to take on the challenge of taking a photo a day, otherwise known as a 365, well it was a 366 as it was a leap year. On day 2 I decided to switch it to be about my son Ben. A photo a day of his life. I thought I would probably make it to February but surprisingly I made it all the way till the end.
This was a huge project. I know it doesn't seem like taking one photo a day for a photographer would be hard, but have you heard the expression 'the plumber with a leaky tap" ? Well that was me. I place huge importance on photographs of course, I live my life with the motto " give me memories over labels any day" so when Ben was born I had him captured beautifully by my business partner Kirsten and of course I did my own shoots of him. Then life steps in and on my days off I often didn't pick up the camera, because you know that's work and as any new parent knows that thing we used to call "free time" is a distant memory. Months would fly past and I had only taken a couple of iphone photos.
So I decided to document a year in his life which started with him being 10 months old. I put it on Instagram so I would have to write words and be accountable to post too. I photographed milestones like his first steps and the everyday and mundane too. The challenge was to find the time. The working mum juggle has got to be one of the hardest and I had decided to throw in more work. Something though I already knew I would treasure forever.
I learnt a lot from this challenge. I photographed it on my MK 3 with mainly only my 35mm lens. I wanted to not use iphone pics but there were days when Ben was sick or I was sick or just exhaustion. Sometimes though its more important to get the memory than the device you capture it on. Not all of them are masterpieces as there were times we were sick but i made sure there was a photo every day.
This Challenge taught me to observe the beauty in the ordinary and the every day. As often there were days you don't leave the house. To notice all the little personality traits he was developing and trying to capture them so I will remember them in years to come.
Above all I just wanted to capture the love. Becoming a mum has been the greatest and most life changing thing I have done and it has shown me even more the importance of my profession to capture love and families. I hope in years to come Ben will see this and know the lady behind the camera- his mum- loves him very much ~ Rebecca
