Almost on time for the "new year", I've managed to (more or less) complete a rework of the site. The old one was based on a JavaSript gallery (see credits), which was nice, but did not scale for the amount of images that accumulated over time. That's why I had to limit the images shown to 30. That was somewhen in November, and it took me until now to really make an update, which is mainly because of a lack of time I could invest in that, and my less-than-advanced knowledge in JS and CSS.
Effect-wise, the current design is less fancy, but way faster and scalable than the original site. Aaand I added new features. These are the news section (I take you already noticed that, since you are reading this), selected links to other people who are also doing daily/periodic photo projects, a credits section, and a shoutbox (and for those that look into the source code: yes, that's an iframe inside an iframe. The best solution i could find, and the only way to get it working).
I didn't get around to finish the archive section, so that's something that's going to be added in the future (the layout is mostly done, "only" the JS coding is left to do).

If you notice any bugs or flaws in usability, feel free let me know (either through the shoutbox or via 8pm@onkel-mo.de).
Today I finished the first year of photos.
Whew, that passed a lot faster than I thought.

Taking daily photos has become an important part of my life. I really love to be able to recapture each day of the last year. I'm not going to stop anywhen.
Some observations about taking daily pictures:

• You get more self-assured ("Let them look")
• You tend to make decisions about going where or when based on where you will be at the time taking the picture.
• Having a "standard expression" makes it a lot easier (and faster) to take the pictures.
• Having a constant somewhere (time, location, facial expression, etc.) makes it a lot easier to keep it up.
• Missing a picture (or the mere possibility of that, by forgetting the cam, for example) makes you really uneasy, like leaving the stove on.
(Therefore:)

• Always take your camera with you. Everywhere.

[There's a more lengthy article (in german) about this in my blog]

What is this?

I'm taking a photo of the things I see (what's in front of me, basically) and myself at 8pm each day.

Why?

For the Greater Good of Mankind™.
Because I feel like it.
I had the idea of taking daily (or periodic, to be more general) photos of something for years. For instance, I always wanted to shoot the same photo from the Kennedy Bridge in Bonn facing the Siebengebirge for every day at the same time over a year. But I never got around to that (apart from the fact that it is nearly impossible to be at the same spot at the same time every day).
Some time ago, i stumbled over another daily photo project, which reminded me that I wanted to do something similar "sometime".
And as it is always with such projects if you want to do them, I just started, without thinking too much about it. Here we are.

Why 8pm?

Because at that time the probability is highest that I'm neither at home nor at work while having enough light (at least half of the year) to not be forced to use a flash. I will still be at home a lot, though.
Actually, I started with taking the pictures at 10pm (and so are the first 6 pictures), but soon noticed that I would always have to use a flash, which i dislike. A lot.

Why this setup?

Most other project resolve to take the pictures from the exact same angle, with a mostly neutral expression, in order to better document the change.
I wanted to more or less document what I am doing. And to see me change a little (or not), of course. But I wanted to catch my mood as well, so no "neutral faces".
I tried to experiment with the layout of the images, being more "free" and so on, but ultimately noticed that keeping the same layout has the most effect ;).

This is a short overview over other people doing daily or periodic photo projects.