Remembering All Of Your Life, One Second At A Time

in #photography8 years ago (edited)

What would you do to help yourself remember every day of your life that you can?

What I started doing is what many people might consider a fad by now, but for me it wasn't about the fad. Nor was it about trying to go viral with something. It was about being genuinely interested in the idea that maybe there's a small something I can do which will help me remember any given day by seeing only a moment from it...even years later.

Many people have 365-day photo projects they decide to undertake, and while I felt like that would definitely be a worthy project to set out on, I decided for the much more concise one-second-per-day project which spanned from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2012. Not only does it help me remember as many days as possible, but it makes for one hell of a cool thing to reminisce over.

The first year.

I originally got the idea from seeing the video of someone else who had done something similar the year before, and it turned out to be a great video. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was that did it now, because the video has since disappeared from the site it was hosted on. Ever since I began, I also noticed another person doing them as well, and had a video posted in 2012 that spanned from birthday-to-birthday. His name is Cesar Kuriyama.


Cesar Kuriyama

Cesar was who created the app "1 Second Everyday", which many of you may have seen, and even had his own TED talk about it.

Granted, I didn't actually use his app to create my videos. I used Sony Vegas instead. I have to have the total-control a program like that gives you, i.e. frame rates, my own fonts, resolution settings, etc. This also allowed me to mix cameras, as I have 4 of them I tend to rotate through. Nevertheless, Cesar enjoyed my video and we talked briefly. He seemed more interested in 1SE creators who were using his apps, but he did refer to me as a "power user" when helping share my video to the world. He even asked me to be a judge for a contest he had in mind, (which I don't believe ever materialized).

It wasn't long after that people began posting one-second-everyday videos left and right. One of whom was from a gentleman named Sam Cornwell, who posted a video showing 1 second of every day of the first year of his son's life. His video went super-viral with over a million views in about a week. It's currently sitting at nearly 3 million.

Before posting that, Sam originally contacted me after I posted my video at the beginning of that year to ask how I had done the titling and so forth, because he had plans on creating that specific video once his son was born (a day before my own birthday, in fact). We've since been friends-across-the-pond on Facebook.


Sam Cornwell

Following the relative success of the 2012 video, I decided to make another one for 2013. Not knowing what the year would hold for us, it was around the end of March when we discovered we were having a baby. That year's video was the most successful one to date, and I owe that to my little boy.

All told for both years, I was featured on people.com, huffingtonpost.com, buzzfeed.com, cbsnews.com, petapixel.com... twice, and , laughingsquid.com not once, not twice, but a total of THREE times if we include the third video, the one for 2014 as seen below.

However, after the third year, I decided I was finished. I figured 3 was enough. 2014 brought such events as my father passing away, my mother having cancer for a 3rd time in less than 20 years, as well as us living in a place we were forced to choose because our previous landlords decided they wanted to convert our apartment building (of 4 residences total) into an office building. It was a very un-fun year.

But I'm an idiot.

So much stuff happened in 2015, such as the fact that my mom KICKED cancer for a 3rd time in her life, also I bought my first house for me and my family. Aside from the year my son was born, 2015 came in at a close second....and I should've had a camera running.

Thus, "Just A Second 2016" is currently under construction.

I expect Steemit will make its way into the video at least once or twice. ;-)

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This is fucking awesome. I hope you keep it going for many years to come. An idea that often comes up with my podcast partner on @paradise-paradox is that, now is the first generation to have the technology to document our lives... In 50 or 100 years, our great grandchildren might be wondering what we were like, and load up YouTube to find out. So you're certainly building a legacy here, and showing people in the future what everyday life is like for people today.

Hey, thanks @churdtzu . I appreciate the encouragement, for sure. Another thought I had about that, also, is that with the technology currently available to us, and with as easy as it is to delete things (purposely or not), this generation is going to have the largest amount of lost data than any generation that came before it. This may also be due to the fact that no other generation cared enough about their lunch to take 50 pictures of it before eating it. LOL
That's really cool you have a podcast, too. I and 3 of my friends are also starting one. Three episodes of it have already been posted, in fact. Feel free to check it out if you'd like, they're in my blog. It's less technical and not so much about cryptocurrency or the workings of Steemit as you tend to find around here, but rather more about the topics and content we see people posting on Steemit. We crave audience participation. :)

Great video. Great post.

I keep trying to take a picture everyday and I keep failing .

Thank you for the inspiration.

Thanks for checking it out. It definitely takes a lot of patience.
I considered doing the photo-per-day thing, but I found that by shooting video casually, it was easier than having to cull my photos every day to find one I liked. This felt much more satisfying, and frankly it's fun to watch. ;-)

This is sick as fuck. Damn. Kudos.

Thanks! I just hope 2016's video turns out as well as the others. So far it's a lot of my son. lol

You post some really thoughtful stuff Winston. No pictures of you fixing other people's mistakes though...

Your idea is inspiring. Unfortunately, my seconds would all consist of the same thing. Wearing black and trying to get morons to do their jobs... plus some force chokes. Those would be fun to remember.

#Inspired bro!!! I f#kin love this.

Thanks man. Glad you like. It's quite a project. Takes a lot of patience.

This is just quite amazing! I have chills from how awesome this is. THANK you !

This was awesome. As I mentioned "I feel like I'm inside you! So intimate yet mundane!"

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