Daily dog picture: why the habit feels worth keeping

Part 1

What people mean by a daily dog picture

Photo-a-day projects, sometimes called 365 projects, involve taking one photograph a day and gathering the results in one place, whether that is a blog, a social network, or a video compilation. Once cameras became standard on smartphones, taking a photo and posting it online became an ordinary part of daily life for a lot of people.

Diaries and photo calendars

A well known example is The Brown Sisters, a series the photographer Nicholas Nixon began in 1975, shot once a year, which had grown to 35 photos by 2010.

How this differs from a single portrait

Early studio photography required people to sit still for a long stretch and stay stiff, since any movement risked blurring the picture.

Part 2

Where the habit comes from

George Eastman's Kodak camera, introduced in 1888, cost twenty five dollars and came preloaded with film for one hundred shots, so people could shoot anywhere and mail the whole camera back to have it developed. People used that new freedom to photograph everyday motion, including children playing with pets. In 1900, Eastman introduced the cheaper Brownie camera for about one dollar, and by 1905 a third of American households owned a camera.

Rise of instant cameras and daily rituals

Kodak's own guidance in 1943 encouraged parents to record a child's whole life as what it called an intimate snapshot diary. Polaroid's creator, Edwin Land, imagined a wall where people would be snapping photos all day long and adding them as they went.

Social media turning this into a shared habit

In 2004, a web developer named George Taylor McKnight began taking a photo every day and later used Flickr to run a group that encouraged other people to join in.

Part 3

Why a daily image of your dog feels meaningful

One photographer who documented her own life daily for a year said the project made her notice ordinary details she would otherwise have missed, like the light hitting a wall or the way her plants grew from day to day.

Part 4

Simple ways to keep up a daily picture habit

Same time, same spot, same light

Photo-a-day habits tend to last longer when they're tied to something you already do, since an anchor habit gives you a cue you can't miss. Framing can drift a little from one day to the next without you noticing, which is one reason photo-a-day habits tend to fail over time.

Using a phone reminder or calendar app

A single daily reminder set at a realistic time works better than trying to remember on your own. One photographer chose her own birthday rather than the new year as the start date for her yearly project, because it felt more personal and avoided extra new year pressure.

Batching light editing weekly instead of daily

You don't have to edit your dog's photo the moment you take it. One photographer who shot daily for over a year edited her images the same evening rather than letting them pile up, and let go of heavy retouching to save time.

Part 5

What to do with the pictures once you have them

Once you have a stretch of daily pictures, you have a few simple options for what to do with them.

• Turn a stretch of daily photos into a printed book, the way photographer David Hume Kennerly took one photo a day for a year and later published the collection as a book called Photo du Jour.
• Compile the photos into a video, the way two well known photo-a-day videos turned years of daily pictures into a compilation, including one that covered photos taken between 2000 and 2006.
• Sharing your photos publicly is not required proof that you kept the habit.

Part 6

A different kind of daily dog image

A plain daily photo repeats the same idea in a new moment: the same dog, a new day. You could instead place your dog in a different setting each time, so the picture changes its whole backdrop rather than simply logging where you happened to be standing.

Keeping the habit fresh with variety

One drawback noted about photo-a-day projects is that repetition alone does not guarantee improvement, since it does not necessarily address gaps in skill.