Easing into a 356 project with anja Pohlmann | Photographers create podcast

In this episode, Anja shares her experience and insights on personal projects, specifically focusing on 365 projects. She discusses the benefits of personal projects, how she got into them, and her favorite projects. Anja emphasizes the importance of starting small and gradually building up to a 365 project. She also provides tips on staying organized, keeping photos fresh and creative, and post-processing in a 365 project. Anja concludes by sharing resources for those interested in starting their own personal projects.

Anja is a photographer and filmmaker for families and small businesses based in Worthing, UK.

Anja’s main goal with all her work is to instil confidence in her clients: in families by showing up as their real selves in photos that will help children grow up knowing where they belong. And in small businesses to show up authentically to their audience to build real connections with those they want to serve.

One of Anja’s favourite way to hone her creative skills is through personal projects. For years, she’s been trying and improving her techniques and skills in a variety of ways so she can implement them in her professional work. Her favourite and longest-standing creative outlet is a Project 365 which she’s been doing for over 4 years now.

Her work has been exhibited and awarded nationally and internationally and she’s held online classes in various capacities to share her skills and expertise.

My website: https://www.anjapoehlmann.com/

365 course (hosted and recorded for DFP Education): DFP education 365 course (affiliate link)

IG: https://www.instagram.com/by_anjap/

Takeaways

Personal projects allow photographers to explore ideas, test and play, and learn new techniques that can be applied to client work.

Starting with smaller projects can be a good segue into a 365 project, allowing photographers to build confidence and develop a routine.

Personal projects are an opportunity to capture and document the little moments in life that often go unnoticed.

Staying organized and having a system in place is crucial for managing a 365 project and ensuring that photos are easily accessible and editable.

It's important to use the equipment and process that works best for you, whether it's shooting with a phone, film, or digital camera, and finding a post-processing workflow that suits your style and preferences.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Scheduling Collaboration

00:38 Getting into Personal Projects

02:55 Starting a 365 Project

06:41 Taking Baby Steps into a 365 Project

07:37 Starting Small and Building Confidence

09:29 Giving Yourself Grace in Personal Projects

10:37 Continuing a 365 Project

11:14 The Power of Photos and Videos

12:10 The Importance of Personal Projects

13:09 Filling the Gap in Photos

15:31 Keeping Photos Fresh and Creative

16:30 Finding New Angles and Techniques

24:48 Staying Organized in a 365 Project

29:13 Using the Equipment and Process That Works for You

32:04 Resources for 365 Projects

35:11 Conclusion and Where to Find Anja

Anja (00:02.219)

Hi Anya, I'm so glad you're here with us today on the Photographers Create Podcast. How are you?

Anja (00:08.694)

I'm good, thanks for having me Alison.

Anja (00:10.55)

I'm good. So you're coming from the UK, you're at night, I'm in the morning. So this is a good scheduling collaboration we've done that's worked for both of us. Today you're going to be talking to us about personal projects, which I'm excited about. I love personal projects, but for each person it's very personal. That's why it's a personal project. So you're known for doing 365s and these longer.

stents of personal projects, why don't you tell us about how you got into personal projects, what the benefits for you and like some of your favorites.

Anja (00:47.902)

So I do a variety of personal projects, but most of them kind of they last for a while. Well, one of my actually I would say my favorite is my 365. I'm in year five now and I think I've missed maybe like five or tops ten days over the whole time. So I'm quite proud of myself. I'm very good at staying focused on something. I think that's just how my personality works.

Anja (01:08.907)

Yes.

Anja (01:15.73)

But I really, really love personal projects because they let me explore ideas, they let me test and play and I can then use what I learn in my client work. So I'm a documentary family photographer and personal brand photographer. So I photograph people for a living and I also have, so I also do video and I come from the video world. So I have personal projects. Currently that one is sleeping, but I have one that is

geared towards video as well. And I just really like being able to kind of play without having to prove anything to anyone or having to...

Anja (01:58.778)

That's a word. Having to kind of give something to someone that they're expecting because it's just for me. And it's what I really, really like about personal projects is I don't have to share them if I'm not confident with it or if it's not something I need to have out there. They're just for me. And I think that's what photographers or creatives sometimes forget that you don't have to share everything that you do. Like that's what personal projects are there for you.

I do like sharing the things that I do because I'm quite proud of them, even if they're not amazing, but they're good for me because they teach me something. But yeah, they just let me play and let me just experiment and kind of go get creative. And then I can use what I learn when I actually work with people who pay me.

Anja (02:45.846)

Yeah, so what got you into the beginning of your five year 365 project? Like what spurred you to actually do that? Cause that's a big commitment.

Anja (02:55.362)

Um, so I've seen 365 absolutely ages ago. So I'm probably going to age myself here, but I come from the days of Flickr. Um, so I think I started my Flickr account in 2006 or something. And I was kind of part of some communities and people were talking about taking photos every day and I was like, I can't do that. That's too much. Um, so, but I always had in the back of my head, head that I wanted to do something like this. Um, and.

A few years later I found this app called One Second Every Day. I don't know if you know it, if other people know it. It's a video app. Yeah, it's still around. So, they're amazing. So basically you record a second video every single day with your phone and then you can mash it up into a video and it just happens with an app. So you don't have to do anything. And that kind of, I feel like that was my segue. I did that in maybe 2013 or something for a summer. And then I did it again in like 2016, 17, something like that.

Anja (03:32.264)

Oh it is? They're so cool! Yeah.

Anja (03:52.602)

for a whole year. So I've got a video of a whole year of my life. That's like 15 minutes long. And I watch it and like, oh yeah, I remember this. I remember what I did. And it's just the power that photos and videos can have, like reminding us of things that didn't just happen in that second that you documented, but what happened around, what happened on that day or in that week, people you met with, the things you saw or what you experienced.

And so the 365 was constantly still in my head, like I would like to do it, but I don't think I can. And I started with like smaller version projects. So I started, at one point I did a 100 mornings. I literally, I call my projects, the names of my projects are incredibly literal. So I had one called, oh, I'm so sorry. My mom just called. I started with 100 mornings project. So.

Anja (04:41.326)

It's okay.

Anja (04:50.09)

Every morning when I was at that point, I was unemployed every morning when I went to work, I photographed something on my way to work and because I, I come from the video world, so everything is in like landscape mode, and I kept forgetting to turn my camera into portrait mode. So my challenge for this project was to take a photo in the morning and it has to be portrait mode. So I did that for 100 days and I kind of I have like love.

I didn't really give myself any other specifications apart from it had to be until 11 a.m. and it had to be portrait mode. So it was the first bit and then I did a year-long project where I took photos of strangers for a whole year once a week, which was really terrifying and I usually did it on a Sunday afternoon because I'm like, I don't want to do it, I want to talk to strangers. And then I did another one which was another year long and I did it with other people. We had a theme every month. I gave the themes, I literally let the project.

Anja (05:32.383)

Yeah

Anja (05:43.862)

everything I gave a month and we went out and took a photo for that month for the theme. So I kind of like very slowly walked into that thing of first of all like photographing daily and then another one like photographing for a whole like year and kind of have a project that spans over a whole year. And then at some point I was like I'm just going to do this now. So that was on my birthday in 2019 so my birthday is in November. And one of the things that I didn't want to do was photograph like start this project in January because

January is already so full of expectation and pressure to do everything better than the last year. We live healthier, we move more, and we see our friends more often. We don't actually have time or energy for all of that. So I didn't want to do this in January when everything was already so new and we had this big expectation. So I started in November, which also meant I started in the really dark time, like kind of at the beginning of the dark time of the year. So...

Anja (06:41.108)

Yeah.

Anja (06:42.17)

I did the really hard bit first and then when it goes into summer it's a lot easier to photoshop every day because you have more light to play with.

Anja (06:51.882)

So it was like this baby steps into 365 because it It that idea I'm going to take a picture every single day for 365 days feels big and I've known people who like Take pictures of themselves free like or self-portrait for years like going over that But to start with like the one second video for a month thing, which is so much fun If anybody's ever seen those are really fun

Feels like a great segue. Like, if you want, like you have this goal to do a 365, but you feel intimidated by it, try doing something smaller. Do you recommend that for people? Is what it kind of, like that's what you did. Do you recommend that or do you think just go for it? There's really no point in doing all this other stuff before.

Anja (07:37.882)

I think it really depends on what kind of personality you are. A lot of people start the 365 and they stop two weeks in Which means it's too much and they put too much pressure on themselves. So I do think That starting smaller is a really good segue Like that I mean the one second every day is amazing because it also everything's on the phone So you don't actually think about like oh I have to take my big camera and have to make it nice No, you just take any video so that kind of takes the pressure of the

perfection of the image or the video. But also kind of just reducing the time that you want to do a project of really helps you get into that. It's not the whole year. It's like you could do it for a week or a month or a lot of people do over summer like a hundred days of summer and usually because kids are home and you have more time with the kids. So if that works, I think that's a good idea. But I do think if you feel like you're someone

who can't stick to a whole year right off the bat, start smaller and just see how it goes. And if you feel like, okay, I'm going to do it for a week and it still works, I'd do it for a month and it's still worth it, then just keep going. But also if you, if you miss a day, if you say, okay, I'm going to do a daily project for a certain amount of time, if you miss a day, don't just throw it away. Like don't just say like, oh, I missed a day now. That's just, it's over now. It's not over. Like obviously it's...

It's a shame if you miss a day, but you can either sort of cheat, take another photo the next day that kind of represents a similar thing that you did the day before. We just accept the gap or you just kind of get on with it and figure out how to not miss it. Miss another day. And also, it's I mean, if it's a personal project, it's your project. You make the rules and missing a day. It shouldn't mean that the project is has failed.

And I think a lot of people put a lot of pressure on it. Like I have to do it every day. I miss a day, it's already done. I can't do it again until next January, which is like a long time. If you start in January and you skip a day on January 12th.

Anja (09:43.81)

I agree when it comes to personal projects you have to give yourself a lot of grace and wiggle room that that's not this confinement I mean sometimes confinement can bring creativity But if the confinement is making you miserable then you need to change something because a personal project is supposed to be Uplifting and good for you and help you, you know stretch a bit, but also enjoy the process But I've heard of people with 365

who will take seven pictures in a day and consider that still 365 like at the end of the week or do a couple and like at a time like do two or three and consider that their three days. And I think whatever works for you with that sort of massive project is 100% acceptable. Whether you miss a day or can, you know, combine some days. I think the fact that you're even doing it, you should pat yourself on the back cause that's a big deal. So what?

You've continued this for so many years. Like, what is this doing for you? Why are you continually doing it for yourself?

Anja (10:45.006)

So the first year I did it, I kind of gave myself some milestones. I'm like, yes, I managed to do 30 days, I managed to do 50 days, and then I managed six months and the whole year and whatever it was. I literally wrote out when I have milestones and I'm just like, yes, this is amazing. And at the beginning, after 50 days and 100 days and 183 days, which is halfway, I made slideshows and like, I really like seeing this and kind of just seeing my

my year or my life in front of me kind of developing over time, one photo at a time, just really, it made me really happy and it gave me something because, like I said before, seeing photos or videos of your life really reminds you of all of the things that you do. We keep forgetting the little moments in life and when you have photos of those really, really boring, subtle things, like things that you do every day.

It really kind of brings home like my life is really good. My life is amazing. And it's not because I fly to like fly around the world every other day or every other week, but because what I built here is really good and it's very, I'm content with it. I'm happy with it. Obviously if you go through tough times, those purchase will say something different to you, but if you get out of those tough times, you can look back at this, I over, I overcame this. So for me, it's this reflection.

work that I can do through this. So now I don't do slideshows every 50 days or 100 days, I do a slideshow at the end of the year. So I've got four slideshows now that are each like three to four minutes long and they're just like really just relatively quickly those photos of the year and I print my photos. So actually I got them out of the shelf. So obviously your listeners can't see it but they're like, they're thick. And I've got four of those now.

So I print them with blurbs so they don't have to be really expensive. But there's literally one photo per day on a page and I can flick through it and it's, I literally sometimes my partner asks me about something that we did and like, oh, I remember there was in this year, so I go into my book and literally, oh yeah, we did that day. And because it has a date and it reminds me of things that we've done and it's just a nice recollection of my life. And I think it kind of comes back to being the third of three children.

Anja (13:09.794)

So I'm the least photographed one, because once we kind of got out of the, the toneless age, 34 years, my parents kind of got not as excited about photographing us anymore. So there's a lot more photos of my big brother, my big sister. So I, there's a big gap in my life in photos, because then I also, when I grew up, kind of like, oh, don't photograph me, I'm ugly, I don't want to be in photos, because I learned that from my mom, like put the hand in front and stuff. So there's a big gap in photos of my life.

Anja (13:34.424)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (13:37.378)

And I feel like I'm catching up with this now by doing it almost excessively. But it's nice because it's for me. And like nobody's asking me to do this. And after the first year I asked my partner, do you think I should continue? He's like, yeah, hell yeah, of course. And like the second year again, like, should I continue? I don't know, should I take a break? And it just naturally happened that I kept photographing. So my camera is always near me. This is always closed, batteries always charged. There's always a memory card in it.

Anja (13:43.07)

Hahaha!

Anja (14:05.302)

And I can always go, when I go for a walk, I have a little bag and I just throw my camera in. So it's not my big camera that I photograph my clients with. It's another camera, it's actually quite battered. It had a bath in the sea water, which is not ideal for camera equipment, as you can imagine. It's a bit laggy, it's a bit, not everything works 100% anymore, but it works enough for me to take good photos. And if you look at my photos on my Instagram feed, you can't tell that this is done with a 4.2 camera.

Anja (14:20.005)

No.

Anja (14:34.09)

or some of them are taken with a camera that's like 12 years old and you can't tell because it's not about pixel peeping, it's not about the perfect photo. The photos are not that exciting either for other people, but they're exciting for me. And I feel like that keeps me going. Like just, I get a lot more aware of the little moments that I have in my life. Um, finding different angles as well, which again then helps me with my client work, making sure that I get different angles of

situation instead of just photographing everything head on. Go high, go low, drag the shutter, just kind of play with lights, play with shadow and just kind of because I had to, I live in this flat and we've been living here for over two years now so there's only so many times I can photograph a certain scene so if I want to, if I'm not going out and I want to take a photo of the day I need to find a different angle for something. So it really helps me stay creative and find new versions of.

something that's always there.

Anja (15:33.746)

Yeah, yeah, I was, that was the question I was gonna ask you while you were talking. I was thinking, I was like, you said these photos aren't necessarily anything special, but you love them, but they're obviously not terrible. And like, how do you not take the picture of the exact same thing all the time? Because our lives are very monotonous. Being a human and the needs we have to be able to take care of ourselves is monotony. It really is like work and food and sleep and bathing and, you know, with your kids picking them up, playing with them or

reading them a bedtime story, like those are great moments, but for years of them, you know, being able to photograph the same thing over and over again and being excited about it, I would love for you to tell us a little bit more. You're talking about using different techniques like blur and light and things like that. Like what do you do to help keep your tech, like your photos fresh for yourself? Share, share, I don't know how to do it.

Anja (16:30.567)

Well, so one thing is obviously photographing exactly the same thing that you photographed before because things around us change. You have plants in your home that grow, you have kids in your home that grow. So you change up your furniture, you change up your wall decorations, you change up photos on the walls. So things don't, for the majority of people, things don't stay the same 100% over a longer period of time. There's small things that change. So I've got...

I've got plants that grow like crazy because the flat that we live in is just beautifully bright. We have this massive window in the living room. So I have for a while, I took photos like every other month of a windowsill showing how the plants in that change, how they grow and how I changed the decoration on it. So that's something that really can spark creativity, like just seeing the same thing but seeing what's changed. Another thing, like I said, just change your angles. Go down on the ground.

figure out how to like maybe climb on a ladder and photograph down, you can include yourself in photos, use a tripod and a timer and just put yourself in a situation, a place. So you're in the photo. I really like working with shutter speeds, so it's really slow shutter and either have a camera static and just see what's moving through. Like, I mean, if you have small kids, they'd probably zoom through anyway.

most of the time. So if you just put your camera somewhere down somewhere and you have the shutter speed of half a second, you can see them running around and just kind of play with this and see what story that tells you. So for me, it's like something really quickly through a frame. It shows how fast time goes. And just kind of, if you feel like, if you try to understand what are the stories in your life and what stories would you like to tell, what stories would you like to remember, how can you visualize those and then kind

Get creative and think about how you can use your camera to take photos at it, not as literal as just taking a portrait of someone or taking a photo of someone sitting somewhere. What kind of things can you highlight? What kind of things can you exclude from the image just by changing your angle or changing your own position? Do you have focal length that you never use? I shoot very wide, I shoot between 24 and 35 millimeter most of the time.

Anja (18:53.006)

So if I wanted to challenge myself, I put an 85 millimeter on my camera and I'm really out of my comfort zone at home with this. So I do have those for events, but I don't use the uses for portraits or anything because I feel like I'm too removed from the situation. But you can really play with that because you can create beautiful bokeh that you can't really do with a wide angle lens and just kind of see what you can do with a really shallow depth of field or really removing yourself from a situation and kind of.

be very much more of an observer rather than being in the scene. And yeah, just kind of use your kit in a way that you never did. Try flash if you never use flash. How can you play with flash and completely manipulate a situation, a scene with a very different lighting situation? Just these things. And obviously not all of this will work for everyone, but I think most photographers are creative naturally.

And we want to play and we want to try. And if we keep doing the same thing over and over, we get bored at some point. So in order to not get bored, we need to figure out, okay, what kind of tool do I have in my back that I never use? What can I do with that? And how can I use it to my advantage to try something new? Because you never know, this might spark something for another session that you have in the future, because you're like, Oh, actually I never do this for my client, but the photo that I got from this test looks really nice. I would like to recreate something like this for my clients. And then you can kind of take this.

Anja (19:52.759)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (20:17.066)

and use it in your paid work.

Anja (20:20.462)

That was a lot of good tips. I hadn't thought of like most of those. As I tried doing a 365, I quit pretty quickly because I was like, I don't know how to do this. Something else that was challenging for me when I tried a 365, when I was shooting digitally was the idea of post-processing that much. Do you have any tips for that? Do you like batch? Do you?

not do post-processing? Do you like try to shoot, you know, JPEG in camera so you don't have to? You have a little bit more color with it or whatever. Like what does your post-processing look like?

Anja (20:57.09)

So I should roll everything I do my personal work and my client work and at the beginning So when I started my 365 I edited my photos every night in the evening Sometimes I kind of had two or three days But at this point now, I basically have reminded my phone for Sunday night to edit my 365 So Sunday night, there's nothing happening. I'm not missing anything. The sun's down. Don't want to go outside anymore So I can sit on my computer for half an hour. I just import all the photos

The thing is also because I photographed with a separate camera, I don't have to figure out which camera did I take these photos with, where's the memory card for this. It's just one camera. Most of the time it's just one camera. Um, so I know where the photos are, I just import them on my computer in Lightroom, just really quickly go through a quick coloring process. So I try to, if I have five photos of the same thing, I just choose one. I don't overthink it because it's a personal moment, like...

I mean, I don't have to deliver them to anybody. So I just choose one. If I choose three, then I choose three. But I just try to be really, really ruthless with calling down the photos that I want. And sometimes I end up with one photo for a day, which is perfect because I then don't have to go like, okay, which photo is one for the day. But sometimes I have a hundred because I did a lot of things. I went on an event with my partner, he's a performer, and I photographed him.

in his rehearsal and doing the show is that I've got a lot of photos because I want to give them to him as well. So I then need to choose one. But I do. So I cull really quickly. I have presets. I've edited with Lightroom. I have presets that I created myself over years and years. I've been using Lightroom since it's out, which was, I don't even know how long that was, 2010 or something? 2012? It's a long time. So I've been using Lightroom since it came out. So I kind of, I'm quite proficient with it. And I created

Anja (22:43.44)

Yeah, I don't know.

Anja (22:53.698)

a preset that really works for me that gives me 80% of the way. Sometimes I have to adjust a little bit. I export it as a JPEG and then it sits in a folder. So what I really would recommend is find a process that works for you. Can you do it every day? Then do it every day. Do you think you can do it once a week? Set a time once a week where you do half an hour. Don't give yourself more than an hour because then you're just overthinking it because you don't actually have to shoot tons. Some days I really just take one or two photos and then I edit one of them.

And that's my photo of the day. So find a process that really works for you with your lifestyle. That could be early in the morning, later in the evening, on a weekend, on the weekday, when your kids are napping, when your kids in school, when everybody else hasn't gotten up yet because you're a morning person, just do it, whatever works best for you in a frequency that works for you and have a good system. So for me, it's my personal photos don't live where my business, my, my client photos live. They're on a different hard drive.

They're named by year, month, day. Um, and I have a folder for year, then I have a folder for month and every photos for the month go in there. And when I've edited my photos, I then highlight the one single photo that I like best of the day. Sometimes it's more than one. The ones that I like, I put in a separate folder as my favorites. So when I, when it comes to creating my slideshow or my book, I don't have to go through 5,000 photos, I probably have to go through 500 to get 365.

So you narrowed it down quite a lot already. So really try to get the work done as soon as possible and not have like, oh, I've taken photos every day for five months by having edited anything. Because then again, it's this massive chunk of work that you feel like, when am I supposed to do this? So try to get it done relatively quickly. And yeah, and if you feel like you can't keep up, you probably just have to take a break completely from even doing it and say like, okay.

Anja (24:21.196)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (24:37.884)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (24:41.302)

Meow.

Anja (24:48.662)

Maybe it's not going to be 365, maybe it's going to be the majority of my year. And I'm going to take a two week break because I need to catch up with what I photographed before.

Anja (24:58.138)

Yeah, the only way you could do it is being very methodical and having a good system. I remember when I first started with Lightroom, the very first thing I learned was be organized. Pretend it's a library. And you would have to do the same with your 365 because you're right if you didn't edit anything or do anything with these photos and you have this memory card full of, you know, all these pictures and you don't remember what anyway, it would be too much. It would just be way too much. So that's a really good.

tip to be super organized in Lightroom and pick your favorites as you go versus having to go back is for you know for your slideshow or doing your book which I think you're doing 365 you really need to print this like you have to print it I feel like photographers we just don't print stuff I was on I was talking to a good friend of mine Allison Jacobs on her podcast on the creative frame podcast and she asked me if I had any photos of that I take for personal reason up in my home and I have one.

Anja (25:41.923)

Absolutely.

Anja (25:55.938)

just one. I was like, Oh my gosh, I am terrible. I need to look at you. You're doing so good. I love it. I'm like, I need to fix this right away. But yeah, like having that workflow. So, you know, because I mean, if we have a business, we have our client workflow. So we make sure we hit all of the marks and don't miss anything along the way. Having that for 365 would be super important too. So you have one specific camera and you said that that's

very helpful so you have it with you. It's already ready to go for that project at all times. I wanted to say something about that. So I did my own, I did not a 365 but a summer one and I hate post-processing with a passion and that's a lot of the reason why I shoot film. And so I just wanted to be able to take the picture and have it be done, absolutely done. So I did on Instax. I did on Instax Minis and I just had them. So I have a

I taped them with washi tape into a book. So I just think, and I'm sure you agree, whatever camera, whatever process is totally acceptable for your personal project, whether you're doing it for a week or two weeks or a summer or a year, or whatever kind of personal project you're doing of self portraiture of your family or whatever, you've got to have the equipment that works for you instead of doing it someone else's way. You need to do it your way and what works for you and the project that works for you.

Anja (27:22.45)

So I think if someone prefers to take these photos with a phone, don't feel like this makes this project less valuable. Because if you can do this, if your phone is a camera that you have near you all the time, then use your phone. The only thing is I can't use it because that just gets too messy for me because I don't take my phone, I don't use my phone to take any photos apart from snapshots, screenshots, whatever.

Anja (27:27.487)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (27:48.61)

But if someone likes to take photos with their phone, I just really would say stay organized. So again, even if you don't edit them, whenever you can, put them in folders. So you can create folders on your smartphone as well, on your iPhone or whatever phone you have. You can create folders and I would really recommend creating a folder for each month and just kind of putting photos each, like photos for every day in there already because otherwise it's gonna be very messy if you look through.

photos where you probably like you go somewhere with your family and you take like 50 photos on the day and most of them are might be crap or you cut your child takes a photo and takes million selfies and then they're clogging up your camera roll and you don't really know where the photos are that you've really wanted to look at for this project so stay organized whatever it is that you do stay organized so if you take your take a

Anja (28:27.531)

I'm sorry.

Anja (28:43.082)

Make sure that even if you don't edit the photos right away, you copy them to a hard drive or your computer. So they're not on the memory card because for example, your memory card could just suddenly break and if you have photos of a whole year and you haven't touched them, they're all gonna be gone. So put them somewhere even if you don't edit them. Same with the phone. Like you can, I mean, you can add up photos from your iPhone to your computer and just kind of have them sit on your computer in a separate folder. Just kind of make sure that it works in a way that's...

really helpful for you. I mean, I love the idea of doing instax or Polaroids. It probably gets quite pricey, especially if you do one every single day for a whole year. Yeah.

Anja (29:17.815)

Mm-hmm.

Skin stacks are a little better than a Polaroid for sure. And you can get a bunch on Amazon for like 90 bucks. And so it's not like terrible, but yes, it's more expensive than digital if you already have paid for your digital camera for sure.

Anja (29:29.494)

Yeah.

Anja (29:33.99)

Yeah, I mean, and if you don't want to do editing, shoot JPEG on your camera. I mean, I shoot Fuji. I'm an absolute Fuji lover and I know Fuji does really, really good JPEGs, but still I just like editing my... Because I don't mind editing. I actually really enjoy the process. But if that's not you, don't give yourself a task that's going to make this project really hard for you to actually pull through.

Anja (29:45.613)

Yay!

Anja (30:02.414)

That's really, I'm going to go off on a little bit of a side. So you shoot Fuji, but you don't use their recipes or simulations. That is so interesting because that's like what Fuji is known for. It's known for their simulations to be able to have it take the picture and it already looks like whatever film stock or it already is edited the way you like it. You can do it in camera. That's really interesting.

Anja (30:09.129)

No.

Anja (30:25.974)

Yeah, I mean the Fuji recipes, they look quite nice, but for me they're not quite finished enough. I did try them when I, so I got the very first Fuji X100 when it came out in 2011, I still have it. It's very old, it's very slow. I can't even sell it anymore because it probably gives me like 50 pounds or something. So it's not really worth it, I might as well just keep it. And I tried those recipes with that, just to kind of see how they look, and they look really nice, they're just.

Anja (30:31.394)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (30:38.122)

Yeah, good one.

Anja (30:47.437)

Yeah.

Anja (30:54.846)

I just like editing my photos so they all look like I would edit my work. So all of my personal and my client work all looks the same because it's all edited the same and it's like you can, I hope so anyway, you can see it's all my work. Like you can, no matter if it's a personal photo or not, you can see that it's still the same style. I use Fuji, one of the Fuji profiles as my base level. So in Lightroom you can.

Anja (31:02.577)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (31:23.418)

use the color profile of your camera and the profile can come from a recipe. So it's not like it's, I think I'm using ASTM. It's kind of vibrant, but not super contrasty or vibrant. And that's basically where I based my editing off. So that was the baseline. And then I kind of explored what else I can do with the photos to kind of enhance a little bit more of the contrast, the colors without making it super like...

Anja (31:42.286)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (31:52.366)

super funky, saturated. So I do like that Fuji has that, but it's not, I don't use that to finish my photos.

Anja (31:53.778)

Yeah.

Anja (32:01.982)

Yeah, that's interesting. Sorry. Total total side. It's total side. Often that's I don't know. I just like because Fuji does what they're known for. Oh, my goodness. OK, any last words of wisdom before we go tell people where they can find you. And if do you like have like stuff online about doing 365 projects?

Anja (32:04.762)

That's all right.

Anja (32:22.618)

I do actually have a course, so a few years ago, two, three years ago maybe, I did a course, so someone from, I don't know if you know the documentary family photographer education website, the dfp.com. It's run by a woman, she's American but she lives in Germany, Ashley Radatz, and so they offer online courses for every different, lots of different things in photography and running a photography business. And she saw me.

Anja (32:32.499)

Okay.

Anja (32:39.895)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (32:49.85)

comment on someone's thread on Facebook about 365 and I gave some tips and she said oh do you want to do a crash course for our site so I basically created a course for them it's only available through them I can't actually tell you how much it is because I don't get like I don't get anything from it anymore I think it's not very expensive though and you can get it if you are a member as well so if they also have a membership which isn't very expensive either and so what I go through

Anja (33:02.978)

Okay.

Anja (33:18.318)

how I shoot my 365, how I edit, like I literally screen recorded my screen, editing the photos, how I call and edit them and how quick I am with it, what kind of things I photographed, some tips on how to play with light and play with different functionalities. So it really covers all of the things that you would want to know if you actually want to start this project. But apart from that, I mean, there's loads of other YouTube videos about 365, I'm sure. There's lots of

Facebook groups that kind of have a community around it, they usually are quite busy in January, February, and then they die a little bit. But there's lots of other photographers who do it, who you can kind of hold yourself accountable for with, to kind of push through the year. There's some sites where they give you topics and themes around to shoot around for a month or for the week. I personally do not do that at all, because it actually...

Anja (33:54.894)

Mm-hmm.

Anja (34:16.982)

hinders me taking the photos because if I have a theme in mind and then I don't know how to visualize that theme, I'm like, I might as well not do it. So it doesn't work for me but everybody works differently so if that is something that you would enjoy, you can come up with your own themes or find some Facebook groups where they give you some themes to shoot for so you kind of always have something to aim at. But yeah, so that's my 365 course is there, I'll send you the link and yeah.

if you wanted to know more about me and my work. It's probably easier to just write it down because my name is not easy to spell for English people. Yeah. So my website is anyaproman.com and on Instagram, my main channel on Instagram is by underscore anyapi, but I actually have a 365 account, which I haven't updated since last November.

Anja (34:53.674)

it all in the show notes. I'll link everything in the show notes for people.

Anja (35:11.739)

which is called the days of my year and then I've got another one for street photography which is just Anyapi. But my main is by Anyapi.

Anja (35:18.19)

you okay I'll have everything linked in the show notes so if you're wanting to look at that it'd be interesting to see your 365 even though it's not updated just like give people ideas of how I could actually manage doing this thank you so much for coming on and talking about this because I obviously have no skills whatsoever behind a 365 personal projects yes but not three supplies so this has been so much fun I so appreciate it thank you so much

Anja (35:45.37)

Thanks so much for having me. Honestly, I love talking about it because I actually inspired quite a few people to try it. Some with one second every day and some actually taking photos every day. So I'm all for just shooting for yourself and not just for your clients.

Anja (36:02.43)

Yes, I agree. Okay, I'm gonna stop it.