Our Lives in Pictures

Can you imagine taking a photo every day of your life?  Jamie Livingston decided to do that thirty years ago with his Polaroid camera. He was only 21 when he began taking a photo a day. He continued taking a photo every day of his life until he died on his birthday, October 25, 1997. He was only 41 years old, but he left behind an outstanding collection of photos documenting nearly half of his life. 

Can you imagine how inspiring that must be to take a photograph every day? No matter what, every single day has a purpose. Even on the darkest days, there's still inspiration inside to take that one photo. There would be a drive inside to find that special something worth photographing, to find meaning even in an object that most people would find mundane, and to find the most magical moment with a group of friends. That must have shaped and enhanced his life in some way, perhaps even in the same way a gratitude journal does for some people. 

He left behind a collection of photos which are a reminder to us of the gifts we can find every day in life. Even his most painful photos, the ones that document his journey with cancer, show us what a gift every day of life is. I hesitated to even call it his "battle" with cancer because I don't know him, and I don't know if he viewed it as a battle. He continued to photograph every day of his life, so even with cancer, he never gave up. If he did consider it a battle with cancer, then he won, because not even cancer could take away his determination to take a photo every day of his life. I have so much admiration for his passion for photography, his drive, and, of course, for him as an artist. 

Thank you to JamieLivingstonPOTD for putting a collection of some of Jamie Livingston's photos together and creating this beautiful, moving video. The video doesn't include all of the photos (there were over 6,000!) but the person who created the video chose a nice variety of them. To see more of Jamie Livingston's photos of the day, look here: http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/