Five years of Project 365 and my photo on a book cover!

I love anniversaries. I keep track of the most esoteric dates so I can reflect and wax nostalgic on them, to consider the difference between then and now and to wonderingly consider all that has happened since. Next month will be the 19th anniversary of the day Beloved and I met, for example. In October, we’ll be four years in Manotick. And this week, I celebrate five years since I started my first photo-a-day Project 365.

It’s almost painful to look back at that first month of photos.

Project 365:  one-tenth of the way done!

There are only a few photos I like in that set – and quite a few more that make me cringe. That’s what progress is about though, right? There are a few I’d like to go back and re-edit, and a dozen I’d like to go back and re-shoot entirely. I wish I knew when the boys were babies what I know now about photography! And yeesh, I thought I was pretty good back then.

I decided to start taking a photo every day pretty much out of the blue, a rather random decision borne of a desire to learn to take better pictures and to document our lives in pictures as well as words. I’d say I’ve managed to achieve both of those goals. Still, never in a million years would I have guessed that one day someone would buy one of my photos to use on the cover of a book! *squeeee*

Watch for this book, featuring a cover photo taken by me of Lucas, in bookstores near you in June 2014!

My first book cover!

And it sounds like a pretty neat book, too. At first, I thought it was just a self-published memoir, but I when I read the description and author bio, I was intrigued. I was already planning on ordering one as a ‘trophy copy’ (my mom has already ordered hers!) but I think I might actually read this one, too!

From PEN/Hemingway award winner Brando Skyhorse comes this stunning, heartfelt memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle or The Tender Bar, the true story of a boy’s turbulent childhood growing up with five stepfathers and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth.

From an acclaimed, prize-winning novelist celebrated for his “indelible storytelling” (O, The Oprah Magazine), this extraordinary literary memoir captures a son’s single-minded search for a father wherever he can find one, and is destined to become a classic.

Here’s the original photo on the left, and the book cover on the right:

Fun, eh?

So the moral of this story is follow your heart, no matter how silly and random an idea may seem. You never know where it might lead just five years down the road!

Edited to add: How does this story have an even happier ending? When the author of the book finds you via the big old Internet and sends you an e-mail to say thank you for your photo. “In short: THANK YOU. Your picture is an incredible gift that’s made my book complete.” Wow!

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

6 thoughts on “Five years of Project 365 and my photo on a book cover!”

  1. Nicely done. I think it would be cool to have one of my photos on the cover of a book or CD. Someday.

    Amusingly, I saw the related posts you have about your first sale on Getty Images and you muse that it would be cool to have a photo on a book cover, but that would probably never happen. 🙂 Looks like you made it!

    So you have to be invited to get into Getty? I have photos on iStockphoto but I never now where my images go.

  2. Ha Don, I didn’t realize my book cover covetousness went all the way back to that first sale. Good catch! You can apply to Getty to be a house contributor, but I was invited (like tens of thousands of others) to contribute through Flickr. If you’re interested in contributing through Flickr let me know and I can share your stream with some of the peeps there.

    I use reverse-image search to find most of my sales. Reminds me, I’ve been meaning to do a blog post on that!

  3. I find it so reassuring to hear you dissect the photos from your first ever month. I think you’re an outstanding photographer and I’m so happy to see you selling your images – they are awesome! I would love to be better – not professional better, just family-documentation better – but always felt like it was way out of my reach. Not that I have any artistic talent, but it’s so nice to hear that just getting out there and taking the shots makes a difference. I’m inspired!

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