Why I Started Doing Project Life

At the end of last summer, I was feeling so burned out on photography. I spent the summer photographing anyone I could, editing photos, marketing my business, and hustling at an unsustainable pace. When we went on a vacation in August, I knew in my gut not to schedule anything when we got back. I needed a break.

I was in a total quandary. I didn’t pick up my camera for a couple of weeks, but realized that, even though I needed rest from the business, I still wanted to be taking photographs. So I had to figure out how to do that again, this time just for myself, not to flash around the internet.

Enter Project Life. It gave my photography purpose again. Suddenly, I was capturing life for the sake of memory keeping. I was regularly printing my photos. It was great.*

I made rules for myself, like not having to post any of the photos online if I didn’t want to. I decided I didn’t want to feel locked in to taking a certain number of photos every week, so I ditched the usually weekly format and made layouts that felt more like blog posts — here’s the day we went to the park, here’s when it snowed the first time, here’s what a day in our life looks like right now.

And I’ve realized that my method is very simple — a lot of pictures, a little journaling. I write or stamp right on the photographs. I use minimal embellishments. I love washi tape. I err toward plain so the photos stand out (something I wish I’d known right out the gate so I hadn’t bought a kit I didn’t love).

So, I’m in the process of building the book of our life with Project Life. Once a month, I get together with a friend who does PL too, and we work on our albums and chat. I usually have more work than I can do in one evening, but it’s keeping us both accountable. We share supplies and bounce ideas off each other, and it’s working for us.

I may share more from my album as I put it together, but I don’t see my Project Life spreads becoming a regular part of things around here. I just wanted give a shout out to this amazingly simple system that’s redefined how I keep track of my life and photography. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Really, it doesn’t.

[Click the photo below to see my spreads from December.]

*I’m a huge advocate of getting photos off your hard drive and into you hands, and Project Life is perfect for that. Print your photos! Print your photos! Print your photos!