I have thousands and thousands of photos and I want to share all them with everyone, right now! And since I have so many photos to choose from, it’s tough to choose such a select group of photos. Even knowing that one day I’ll share all these photos, today it’s hard to think of that.

In case you don’t know:

When I discovered thousands of my grandfather’s old photos he’d taken around the world, I decided to share them in his honor. Every day, I post two new photos online: a 35mm slide from my grandfather, and a new photo from me. Once a week, I update a website with the new photos and email them out to friends and followers. I also give away select photos at Unsplash.

How do I choose?

It’s been 58 weeks since I started my photo-a-day project. When I first started, it was a mess. I started because I wanted to to do it, not because I had any idea what I was doing. After struggling with the task of 14 choices every week for a while, I consolidated. Now I spend 2–4 hours every week editing, scanning, and posting new photos online one day a week. Not 7. So how do I choose two photos a day? I don’t.

I make my decisions once a week and it’s not even a standard day. Sometimes it’s Wednesday, or Tuesday, or Monday but it’s one day and it gets done. I also bulk it if I’m going on a big trip and do many weeks at a time. It’s a different kind of system but different works.

Why it works

When I used to choose photos every day it was tough to work on the weekends and traveling. So, when I moved to once a week it was tempting to move the day around. Delay it or avoid it all together because “things got too busy”.

It’s easy to avoid stuff like this. I don’t wake up thinking of photos. I wake up thinking of what design problem I’m currently working on or the code for my most recent design. I don’t think about photos every day. But I committed to this project, so where does that leave me?

Restrictions. I have lots of tiny things that make it work. No more than 2 hours of editing photos a week. No more than 1 week at a time without a trip. Photos have to have a “flow” when I choose them — so when I pick my favorite 7 photos, Les’s have to work with those. If mine were all green, his need to have similar feels or be a good contrast. It’s gotta flow.

Schedules are weird but things work out if you find restrictions to work in.

Wait — Why do this at all?

It’s a good thing to bring up. Why even spend my time with this? Why scan old photos from my grandfather and share them online? Why spend hours on a site, editing, scanning and the emails. Why do any of it? I ask myself this question every once in a while. To make sure I still want to do this. I do because it pushes me but how it’s pushed me has changed dramatically.

At first, it pushed me to get my stuff together and manage my weekly work and non-work stuff (like this writing). After that, it was all about the photos. I couldn’t keep up with Les and I had to force myself to become a better photographer.

Finally, there’s today. I still think this project forces me to stay on top of my schedules and get better at photography. More than anything, right now, it’s about the code.

The website for this project is junk — it’s a bunch of static code that I update every week with search and replace and little tiny changes. It’s not simple, it’s not a great or even good experience. And there’s little reason for it to exist right now. Not forever. I want this site to be useful. I want to get others involved in things with Les’s photos and paring them. I want more and to get there, I have to learn how to build it. So that’s my push.

It’s hard to do things like this. I always say it’s twice as easy to do something little every day than doing something big once a week and I still think that. The reality of this project is that it requires the bigger commitment for it to be worth something. I even have to step up that commitment for this to evolve into what I want, here I come bigger commitment.

Next week: Why I’m writing again

Unsplash doesn’t help me get more clients. It doesn’t push thousands of people to my website to signup for a newsletter or buy some photos. Unsplash doesn’t create a constant flow of clients emailing me about new and exciting jobs.

Unsplash did more than that for me. It helped me become a photographer.

No structure, no ideas, no photos

Ask anyone that knows me and they’ll tell you I’m too hard on myself. It’s difficult for me to judge my own work sometimes and it leads to be being pretty harsh. It doesn’t go away, despite how much I work on it. I was close to not publishing this article last week because I wasn’t ‘feeling it’ — that’s silly right? I did hit publish and I did it because I had to. I didn’t really have to. I could have had no article last week and nothing would’ve happened. I made a goal for myself to post every single week and I don’t want to break my streak.

In march of this year, I needed something like that for photography. The problem is, photography is different. It’s not realistic to assume I’m going to go out to some new place and take amazing new photos every single day. Not to mention that you’d also need ideas every day. With that, it’s harder to establish rules for how you can hold yourself accountable. I find it harder to do one significant task once a week than to do something small every single day. So I needed help.

Personally, I find it harder to do something big once a week then to do something small every single day.

Forcing Choices & Consistency

Unsplash lets you upload 10 photos every 10 days. Let me rephrase that: Unsplash only lets you upload 10 photos every 10 days. I had no real way to judge my own photos and since I’m a terrible judge of my own work, I let Unsplash do the judging.

10 photos every 10 days means I can create a new goal and have consequences for missing my goal. I don’t have any consequences for missing my writing days and guess what? I’m not great at it. What Unsplash does is force a choice. I can’t delay more than one day and I can’t let myself take giant breaks.

When I started, it was rough. I had difficulty choosing photos to upload. I’m sure I also bothered plenty of friends when I asked them to make the decision for me and tell me their favorite one. By constantly having that deadline, I got much better at choosing photos. I also confirmed that I’m bad at judging my own work.

Some photos I would never have published unless I ‘had to’:

Inspiration like fire 🔥 🔥 🔥

Unsplashers take amazing photos

As someone who is always curious and a beginner at lots of things, I’m always trying something new. Without Unsplash providing regular photo inspiration, I never would’ve tried new things

Oh and drones. I’ve already talked about how fellow Unsplashers pushed me to try drone photography. Let me re-iterate my point, though: I would’ve never even tried to take these photos without Unsplash.

Also, it is about the numbers.

I know I’m now supposed to say “it’s not about the numbers” but it is actually about the numbers. All the numbers.

Billions of weekly views to Unsplash.com
10k+ API Requests per-minute
60M+ Searches a month
Thousands of Photographers
6 Team Members
1.5 backend team members -> Seriously
1 incredible website

People use Unsplash so much because it’s amazing. It’s only amazing because of the people that choose to be Unsplashers.

Everyone has a reason for uploading to Unsplash and I’m so grateful for all those reasons. Sometimes it’s site traffic, client referrals, or trying to truly give back to the community. If it weren’t for all the amazing photographers, Unsplash wouldn’t exist.

My numbers:

~8 Months of Unsplashing (March 28th — December 11th)
236 Photos Uploaded
26,375,658 views // 264,058 downloads to date (~8 Months)
8,359,470 views // 76,372 downloads in the last 30 days

I’d also like to point out (and show you) that I don’t have any of those 10million view photos. In fact, I only have 3 that crossed the 1M barrier. They simply add up.

Eight months ago I joined Unsplash. I wanted to push myself to take more photos and, as importantly, do something with my photos. Unsplash turned me into a photographer. I would’ve never called myself one a year ago, and I’m happy to call myself one now.

Thanks, Unsplashers, and thanks, Unsplash team. ✌

December photos are still for sale
Week 37

Follow along: Instagram // Facebook // Twitter
Les’ Unsplash // My Unsplash

How Unsplash made me a photographer was originally published in Unsplash Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How I avoided the trap and started taking photos

Last year, I fell into a classic trap: I convinced myself that I’d take more photos if I only had that new camera. Yeah, that didn’t work (obviously). What worked was something unexpected.

Three months after I bought that new camera I found some old boxes my grandfather (Les) had in storage. Strangely enough, no one had known about the boxes except him. We only found out about them after he passed away. Let me be more specific about “boxes” though: I found 72 Kodak carousel boxes, all with full of film slides. That wasn’t all, I also found boxes of film, prints and old Nikon gear. The gear included things like the Nikon F4, 105mm f2 defocus lens, 85mm f1.8 lens.

Les was proud of his work

The gear and photos were all in perfect shape. No dents, scratches, or scuffs. Les took incredible care of his gear. He didn’t let it stop him from going out and taking photos, though. I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard of about Les skiing down the mountain with a shiny new Nikon SLR on his back. No case, no pouch, only photography.

Les skiing with his camera is a great example of how much fun he had taking photos. He didn’t worry about being able to use the photos for something later. He didn’t worry about people running into him when he was skiing down the slopes with a camera. He went out, had fun, and shot.

Les had asked me to go through photos when I visited him but not these photos. He had a box in his apartment with a few dozen family photos. We never went through those because we didn’t have a working slide projector. Funny enough, I now have 2 working slide projectors in my office. Les was proud of his work and he was always excited to show it off.

I had no idea he had photos like this

Or these

Les dreamed bigger

Les always dreamed of traveling the world as a National geographic photographer. He talked about how great it would be to travel the world taking incredible nature photos.

Les didn’t just dream bigger for himself, he made it infectious. I remember taking a photo with his Nikon D200 when I went out to visit him in Colorado in 2013. When Les saw that photo he thought it was the greatest photo in the world! You couldn’t go into his room without him talking about it and showing it off to you. To be fair, I am his grandson and aspens are his absolute favorite.

My Own Way

Things I’m not good at admitting my work is any good, being bold enough to take the shot, dreaming of something bigger for my photos.

When I think of what Les did, I can’t help but be inspired to take my own photos. Not just subject-wise but in terms of how you go about doing it. Carrying a camera with you everywhere and just having fun wherever you are. That was the thing about Les, he didn’t travel just for photography. He went on business 95% of the time. He had fun and got some awesome photos out of it.

That’s how I got out the trap. I was bolder, I started to carry my camera everywhere. I started to look for the shots even if I couldn’t take the picture. I started to shoot like Les. The rest of the way into ‘becoming a photographer’ involved a whole whole lot of Unsplash.

December photos are now for sale
Week 36 of daily photos

Follow along: Instagram // Facebook // Twitter
Les’ Unsplash // My Unsplash

Next week: How Unsplash made me a photographer

Finding Purpose with My Grandfather’s Old Photos was originally published in Vantage on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.