One year ago today I started a project: take at least one photo each day and post it online. Yesterday, I took the 365th photo in the project and today I compiled a video of the set:

This has been an amazing experience and I’m going to continue with it. Setting aside a few moments each day to look around and find something worthy of a photo adds a very interesting and nice component to everyday life. I’ve started noticing things I never saw before. Looking back at the full set is also a great reminder of all that I’ve been up to over the last 12 months.

I highly recommend a hobby of this sort. I have two pieces of advice. First, it’s helpful to have a small enough digital camera that you can take it with you everywhere. You never know when a great photo opportunity will present itself. Second, don’t expect to maintain a separate blog or even blog section for this (as I naively did), it’s hard to find the time for that. Rather, post the photos to a community photo-sharing site like Flickr that makes posting and organization easy and can connect you to a group of people engaging in a similar project.

I want to send a shoutout to folks on Flickr who’ve been participating in this concurrently. A great community has built up around the project, which has been another great aspect of all this.

Date taken: December 8, 2006

#45: An aerial view of Chicagoland, northern suburbs to be more precisely with a glimpse of the city skyline in the upper left corner. This was a flight from San Francisco and we must’ve had to wait quite a bit before landing, because there was no other reason to find ourselves that far northeast of the city (and O’Hare airport).

Date taken: December 9, 2006

#46: I spent Saturday on campus at Northwestern working. This is Willie, Northwestern’s mascot, in a tree that the staff in the Communication Studies Department office put up to celebrate the season. Note the baes of the tree: it’s our School of Communication T-shirt.

Date taken: December 10, 2006

#47: A friend had just gotten this wonderful flat-screen TV installed. I liked the contrast of the warm yellow walls and the dark gadgets on the wall.

Date taken: December 11, 2006

#48: The weather was pretty yucky in Chicago on the Monday of my visit. I had just gotten off the Metra (coming from Glenview) and was walking toward the El. I passed by the Sears Tower and found it intruiging in the clouds.

Date taken: December 12, 2006

#49: I was busy running around on the last day of my visit and didn’t have too many opportunities to take out my camera. Luckily, on the flight back, there was a kid in the row behind mine who had a birthday balloon with him. This being just a few days before my own birthday, I thought a picture of Elmo in the airplane would work well for the day. In the end, Elmo was also present at my birthday party a few days later where we played Pin the nose on Elmo.

Date taken: December 13, 2006

#50: Yahoo! Answers was celebrating its first birthday on this day and I managed to go to the party for an hour despite various other commitments that evening. The place was nicely decorated in green. The blur in this photo is just as well given how much running around I did that day. The party was fun and as usual, they handed out some fun swag.

Date taken: December 14, 2006

#51: On Thursday, I was over at some friends’ for dinner. We got to eat some very tasty leaf-covered salmon.

Those of you who read my blog, but do not visit my Flickr account may be thinking that I abandoned Project 365 weeks ago. Not so! I have been very diligent about taking at least one photo (if not dozens) every day and designating one for the Project 365 set each day. Before the year is over, I hope to catch up with posting these to the blog.

Taken: December 1, 2006

#38: At the last social hour at the Center, we decided to expand the Wine Committee into the Decadence Committee, because, well, some of us don’t like wine, but more importantly: there are more ways than one to be decadent. So we created a Cheese Committee and a Chocolate Committee. Which one do you think I’m in? These were the fruits of our labor. More coming next time.

Taken: December 2, 2006

#39: In honor of the big Stanford-Cal football game the next day, the fountain water was turned red (bright pink is a more like what it was, but I am assuming the goal was red).

Taken: December 3, 2006

#40: I got a great deal on Cranium Pop 5 (<$11 including shipping!) and as soon as it arrived, I had some friends over for a game. This is my teammate’s rendition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which needless to say, I guessed.:)

Taken: December 4, 2006

#41: Screenshot of an email singing the praises of Project 365 and why more who like photography should join! (hint)

Taken: December 5, 2006

#42: Sex and the City Kiss and Tell book, a must for any SATC fan.

Taken: December 6, 2006

#43: Leaves in the Center parking lot.

Taken: December 7, 2006

#44: Spotted on East Campus Drive at Stanford, reminded me of all the work my project group and I are doing.. although likely not quite the same type of surveying.

I didn’t have the opportunity to post these individually last week so here’s a batch of seven photos from Project 365.

Taken: November 24, 2006

#31: The perfect bite from leftovers after Thanksgiving.

Taken: November 25, 2006

#32: Andrei got me a Titeuf book from France. Titeuf is my favorite cartoon so this was a welcomed addition to my small collection.

Taken: November 26, 2006

#33: Dark chocolate is good for your health so I finally decided to open this gift I’d gotten a while back and start eating the little pieces included within.

Taken: November 27, 2006

#34: I went to a very interesting presentation by Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren and picked up some cool swag.

Taken: November 28, 2006

#35: Spotted this curious “installation” on Stanford’s campus. I think it was a countdown to the Stanford-Cal big rivarly football game.

Taken: November 29, 2006

#36: I went for a drive in the area and found a beautiful road. There were several infrequent signs on it, this Chicken Xing caught my eye in particular. The little chicks look as though they were droppings, which I found amusing.

Taken: November 30, 2006

#37: I was at Trader Joe’s on Thursday and noticed these red boxes near the check-out counter. They looked very familiar so I picked one up to look for some sign that they were from Hungary. I flipped the box over looking for some Hungarian text, but found nothing. However, upon flipping it back over I noticed the big words on the front: Product of Hungary. Excellent! This stuff is great and how fun to be able to get it locally. The bon-bons are each made of a cherry soaked in liquor and then covered with chocolate. You have to eat it carefully as there is liquid inside. Yum!

Taken: November 23, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Pumpkin pie in progress. This was one of those days when it was hard to pick just one photo for the day. Contenders were the boiling cranberry sauce, the finished dishes, the red theme at the dinner table, and the holiday table itself.

Taken: November 22, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I don’t think I’d ever seen an orange tree up close like this before. The photo was taken on Stanford’s campus.

Taken: November 21, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Yesterday’s big walk involved the hillsides next to my office. It starts out with a very long steep stretch. At least it has these neat sculptures for company. This one is a good representation of the struggle it took to make it to the top. Then came some very pleasant views though so I guess it was worth it.;-)

Taken: November 20, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I had lunch at Google yesterday and went on a bit of a tour with my host to check out the various sculptures. This isn’t one of them.;) This is a guard from the back protecting the ‘plex.

Taken: November 19, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I did some shopping for kids yesterday and noticed this abandoned mini shopping cart in one of the stores. I figured it summed up my experience well.

Taken: November 18, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I have never seen chestnuts this huge. They are scattered around campus and initially I didn’t even know what they were. In fact, picking them up made me realize that this is probably what this squirrel was holding the other day.

Taken: November 16, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

One of my favorite areas at the Center is the hot beverage counter where I can choose from among over a dozen teas. See the larger context herep.

Taken: November 15, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Wednesday, I gave my seminar presentation to fellow Fellows. I took this photo an hour after the Q&A had ended. You can see on the clock on the right that it was 10pm.

The title of my presentation was The World is Bumpy: Information Technology and Social Inequality. It was interesting to prepare for this talk as I took several steps back from where I usually start my presentations given that this was a more varied crowd. The questions and comments at the end were great, it’s wonderful to get feedback from a smart diverse group of scholars. Lots for me to think about.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken a photo of the people sitting in the seminar room. Bummer.

Taken: November 14, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Tuesday, the Berkeley-Stanford inequality group met for dinner and a talk at the Stanford Faculty Club.

Taken: November 13, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Squirrel outside my office at CASBS. It’s the third in a series of three I took one after the other. In the first one, two squirrels are facing each other. In the next one, the squirrel with the food (?) turns toward me. The third one is that same squirrel in action.

I have not been a big fan of squirrels ever since one chewed its way through the screens into my room at the Old GC in grad school.

Taken: November 12, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I went for a walk on Sunday around campus with my walking buddy and took some photos of the Hoover Tower, the Rodin Sculpture garden and other assorted sights.

Taken: November 11, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Although watching a Stanford basketball game is not as exciting for me as watching Northwestern play, it was still fun to welcome back the college basketball season. And just to spice things up a bit, this coming Friday NU is playing Stanford here so if all goes well I’ll get to go to a really exciting game.

Taken: November 10, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Friday we had a social hour at the Center. The wine committee came up with the above selection.

Taken: November 9, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Continuing the theme of blasts from the past, I got to see Lloyd on Thursday. The last time I saw him was in San Francisco when the American Sociological Association meetings were there in 1998. Lloyd published one of my parents’ books (Symmetry) and I interned with him for about ten days during college when I was considering a career in publishing. It was a cool experience, Shelter Publications is a neat enterprise.

Lloyd is an amazing person, by the way. He collects life experiences like few others I know. He travels the world very often focusing on the lesser known paths. He maintains a blog about some of his adventures.

He was down at Stanford for the panel discussion in honor of Fred Turner‘s recent book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, which I also attended. It was an interesting trip down memory lane. I thought some of the comments by the panelists were too tech deterministic, but overall it was definitely a conversation worth hearing.

Taken: November 8, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Monday during the Yahoo! Time Capsule Camp event my group ended up in this pizza place to hear Tony Tuesday give us some clues. On Wednesday, I found myself back in the area in search of food close to midnight. Not that many places are open at that time in Palo Alto, but it turns out Pizza My Heart is. Their Hawaiian pizza slice was quite tasty.

Taken: November 7, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

McClatchy Hall on Stanford’s campus houses both the Sociology and the Communication Department. I don’t go to campus too much spending most of my time up on the hill at the Center, but it is a beautiful area so I do walk around on occasion.