Photo editing, video editing, finishing stars, daily creates, assignment creating…..and the list goes on. For my final project, I wanted to get away from the weight of computing and instead get back to what ds106 is really about – creating my own cyberinfrastructure. So I decided to complete my final project in the simplest of ways – simple photography. Yet, it turned out to be not so simple at all.

I went into last week deciding that I would take one photograph for every hour that I was awake – we can call it “every waking hour” if you will. I thought, ‘oh this should be simple…just take one photo every hour on the hour and then see what kind of story I end up with.” Well, taking a picture every hour is not as easy as you may think. First, there were the hours that I was in class…challenging. Then there were the hours I was at work….with my boss….challenging. Then, inevitably, there were the several hours I completely blanked on taking a picture. Every hour is a lot more often than you’d think.

After the first several hours, I got bored with my pictures. I felt like my life wasn’t very interesting…I mean who really wants to see my computer screen as I write a paper, or my every meal? Why should I share the normal aspects of my life with the internet? But AHA! There was my story. My week was nothing spectacular. I had class, work and homework. I ate, slept, napped, played with my cat, had ice cream with friends…and so on. Yet, maybe the fact that my days were filled with normal could be relatable with other bloggers or readers out there? So okay, my life is normal and relatable, but the question still stood: how could I share my daily activities on the internet?

Thankfully, I used my handy dandy iPhone to take all of my pictures. That made it super easy because I usually have my phone on me at all times. No dying battery, no forgetting my camera, no awkward “why are you carrying a camera with you?” questions. The real trick was deciding how to present the photos. My first thought was to create five ani.GIFs, one for each day, showing the photos. But, since some photos were landscape and some were portrait it just didn’t work out how I wanted it to. So I uploaded everything into flickr (not a speedy process, let me tell you) and created five sets. Then for each set I created a slideshow. After I created all the slideshows, I then was faced with the trick of deciding how I wanted to present the material. I opted to create a blog on umwblogs and download a theme that works with photography. I chose the “minimatica” theme in wordpress.

I really like how the website turned out, I didn’t add any description for each day. I wanted the photographs to speak for themselves without me telling you what is happening each day. It’s a different kind of storytelling for sure.

I think the photo every hour really gives a personal glimpse into my life. Just like other bloggers, this is my space. And this is my story of a normal, boring week in April.

p.s. the tab "final project" at the top of the page will take you to the project, but here is another link just in case!