053: Anna Wood – How Shooting a 365 Project Will Improve Your Business & Offer More Value To Your Clients

February 20, 2022

“Embrace all that you can.”

ANNA WOOD

Hey everyone! It’s Sally here, from Studio Ninja. Today’s episode is all about Anna Wood!

Check out some of the biggest points from Anna’s interview below:

What is a 365 Project?

Well, a 365 is quite a self-directed project really. You can do it on anything, but the idea is that you take a photograph every single day for a year. Now when I first heard of it, I was a bit like [inaudible 00:04:33]. I don’t want to take a photo every day. Even if it’s just taking a photo of a receipt or an interesting shape bird poo or something like that. I’ve always liked stuff like what’s different about this. But the point is, I suppose it’s an intentional project. You are intentionally going into it thinking I’m going to take photo every single day for a year. Like I say, any subject so I’ve seen people do them on say colour and just every day is about going to take photo of a different colour or architecture or light or anything.

How do you keep inspiration & momentum?

I think for me, I really wanted to document that period in our life. It was probably easier in lockdown because I couldn’t go out to work. I had two children that I was having to homeschool and my husband’s a teacher so he was actually working more, not less. So I think for me it was probably the easiest thing I did in lockdown. It was like we’ve got four hours this afternoon until tea time till the next thing I need to do. What am I going to do with these children? And I’d be like, right, well, it’s okay. I’m going to get my camera out and we’re going to go to the garden and I’m going to see what light I can find or I’m going to see what interesting thing they do. So that was actually easier.

The 365 in 2021 was much harder because when, I can’t remember what date was in January, was it maybe like the 6th we went back into lockdown and only then that lockdown was very different to the other lockdown? Well, I think the mood of the country was very different anyway, but the light was just awful. It was a lockdown through winter when we have about two hours of sunlight in Yorkshire in winter, and even then it’s covered in clouds. So it was really, really hard. So I guess the inspiration then was just a determination to how am I going to possibly make this look interesting when we are in lockdown in winter.

I guess, to keep inspired I think it’s just you’ve got to want to do it and then you’ve got to find ways to keep it interesting because it would be very easy to just take the same photo for every single day. But actually you’ve got to watch films, read books, look at what other people are doing, follow the light around the house. I’ve done all sorts of things just to try and find something to take a photo of that day.

If you could start your career all over again, Anna, is there anything that you would change?

I’d do a 365 way earlier. I think there’s a bit of a feeling you’ve got to have kids to do a 365 as well. I meant to mention that earlier, and I think that it really, really doesn’t need to be about your life. Like I say, it could be, I wish I’d done something maybe around just walking the streets around where I lived when I walked the dog. I saw a brilliant project, she’s not a photographer, she’s an artist in Manchester and she just likes to take photos of inner city Manchester where she lives of just random things that make her smile and random faces that she finds. So you know an object has kind of a face because of part of it might position to make the eyes. I love things like that.

Thank you!

Thanks again to you all for joining us and a huge thanks to Anna for joining us on the show!

If you have any suggestions, comments or questions about this episode, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post, and if you liked the episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post!

That’s it for me this week, I hope you all enjoyed this episode.

See you soon,

Sally