I had been thinking about a photographic project for some time, hampered mainly by my growing inability to carry too much equipment around. A tripod was out of the question, and I have increasingly found it difficult to carry my Fuji camera for very long, even with a lighter lens attached.

Enter Kath Hadden!

Retrospectively, I can see that there have been three moments pre-figuring my Photo a Day project. 

First my daughter pointed out some examples of Kath Hadden’s work and, like her, I was excited by the colours, style and beauty of her paintings.

My second, closer encounter with Kath’s work was during a visit to Exeter which coincided with her Painting a Day exhibition last year. We spent the whole afternoon exploring the images and had a brief conversation with Kath, enabling a fleeting connection to the artist herself.

That Christmas I received a copy of Kath Hadden’s book, A Painting a Day: the Year in Pictures. With a painting on each page, all 365 photos, accompanied by a short narrative, were beautifully reproduced. [See https://www.kathhadden.co.uk/]

A 365 project?

At times I'd been tempted to re-do a 365 project. I had completed two whole years of taking and posting online daily photos in 2013 and 2014, and, as Kath mentions early in her own journey, I became ‘more alert to the beauty around me’. I learnt a huge amount through both taking photos and interacting online, but realistically I knew I couldn’t now go out every day with my camera. Nevertheless, though I take fewer photos nowadays, I have on my computer a large collection taken over the last decade or so.

It was as I studied the first photo in the book that my idea crystallised, because I found myself recalling a set of photos I’d taken on Vancouver Island, during a stay with my Canadian cousins. Could a 365 project be focused through shadowing Kath’s paintings? In my mind wasn’t the intention of using Photoshop to manipulate my photos in an attempt to imitate the paintings; rather, I wondered if I could use them as prompts.

An attempt at formulation

I thought I would experiment to see what worked, and 11 days in I have formulated some guidelines for myself.

1. My subject is taken both from the painting itself and from the narrative Kath has written to accompany each of her pictures: this becomes the title of my photo for that day.
2. The photos don’t resemble Kath’s paintings, but I try to ensure there are similarities. Though not always possible, I try to keep the season and the time of day similar. I haven’t, for example, used a photo with trees obviously in full leaf during January.
3. Sometimes I find I can use a photo from a similar location to that day’s painting, or one using the same elements of landscape.
4. Although my photos are stored mainly in a 2 x 3 format one rule is to imitate Kath’s 1 x 1 format for every photo. This puts boundaries on my choice because I find that a 1 x 1 crop in portrait aspect doesn’t usually work. Fortunately, most of my photos are in landscape, but even then, cropping into a square can easily destroy the composition.

At some point each day I study the relevant painting and then, often, one of my own photos or a series of photos, comes to mind. As the subject becomes clear, I search using keywords in Adobe Lightroom. Each photo which seems to fit goes into a ‘quick collection’, where I experiment with cropping. Sometimes I further process the photo before going back to the painting. If I’m not happy at this stage I start again!

Lastly, I decided to post each photo on this website, thus re-engaging with an earlier project which I had allowed to lapse.