100 Days of #PicFrame

When I got back from Mexico City in March I felt energized. Every day of that trip brought new wonders, colorful, architectural, transportational. I had so many photos I was forced to PicFrame them, creating small digital collages that pointed to the overlaps and contrasts in the floors, walls and structures we saw. Travel forces me into a higher state of noticing, and I wanted to bring that energy back to my own city (or rather, cities, as I was then in the last months of my Loeb Fellowship). Inspired by Michael Bierut’s 100 Days assignment, I assigned myself to make a PicFrame each day for 100 days, using photos taken that day, hashtagging them #picframeaday on Instagram and Twitter, and storing the whole set on Tumblr.

I made it. Yesterday was my 100th PicFrame. Today I am going to rest, though I am thinking about a new assignment, and open to suggestion.

What did I learn?

Some days are bursting, some days are not. I tend to alternate between days at my desk, getting to 1000 words (the average length of one of my draft essays), and days out and about, going to sites, traveling between Cambridge and New York, visiting parks. Some PicFrames are packed with interesting architecture, and some are made of up things around my house. But I enjoyed looking for those patterns, joined by theme (City) or print (Marimekko) or color (red). It was even more fun to look for patterns in other people’s houses (green).

Some days I only saw one thing I wanted to photograph. Those desperate days, however, provoked more creativity on the app end of things, resulting in pinwheels and stutter-steps that were as interesting as a 3D effect. Monkeying with its frames, rules and effects was also instructive, and inspired my 6yo to make PicFrames too (albeit with more radical image manipulation, and nonsense captions).

Old is OK. I felt guilty when I went to the archives, online, in books, but the response to those PicFrames was often more enthusiastic than to some other experiments.

Even when you set your own homework, you still feel guilty. So I will confess to you: I cheated on the assignment 1.5 times. One Friday I spent all day on the train, when the day before I’d seen a number of amazing modernist sights. I was tired and grumbly, so I posted Breuer the day after I photographed it. One Sunday I photographed some things around my house, then happened upon a better visual idea. I used them the next day, but felt too silly photographing them over again.

Above all else, the exercise confirmed what my eye is drawn to. Mexico City had it in spades, but bright hues, contrast graphics, and intense texture are also to be found up north. I felt on my toes the whole time, which refreshed some commonplace walks, and inspired me to take detours. Whatever visual task I give myself next, it has to provide the same prompting to look at my life a little more closely, if not necessarily in squares.

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