Thomas Birke

Hello my dear readers,

as you read the title, you may think “what a pussy, I take a 1000 pictures on one day, so what kind of challenge is that?”. Well, as you know I shoot 8x10 large format, which requires analog film and a lot of caring for every single photo. (Read my last post to know what it takes).

So what is a 1000 published pictures in a 1000 days about?

Simply put:

I intend to publish 1 image every single day for a consecutive 1000 days.

What do I mean by publishing? By publishing I mean making the image available for sale through my gallery site. If you take a look at my current gallery, you might get an impression what I deem to be publishable. The image has to be tack sharp and with perfect colour. Ready to be printed at 72 by 90 inch. An image really has to go a long way to fulfill this claim.

Regarding that ambition, a 1000 pictures is a heavy batch to keep interesting for every single day! This means I can not take pictures of Potsdamer Platz every day - (where I live and which is one of the few urban places in Berlin). This means I have to get out. Travel the world and explore every single city I have on my 100 places to visit list. This will keep the quality high and my inspiration and motivation levels as well! And also this will be the key element for everyone to revisit the gallery and get thrilled again and again.

About the financial Aspect

I presented the math earlier: to be able to make an image that can be published, I consider I need to make 5 images - that would be a 20% success rate, which seems unreal in digital times. Anyway, that would mean to publish a 1.000 images I would need to shoot 5.000 - which amounts to 60.000€. This is an amount of money that takes me almost 2 years in my current job to earn, but I spend it all on basic things already - so there is no way in doing this as a hobby! I have written down the details within this post - this indicates that finally I have to make 12.000€ a month to survive and keep the rate of published pictures at 1 per day. Selling that much to people I do not know seems fairly unrealistic, I will work on that issue for the next few months.

The Scheduling Aspect

Let’s take a look back to get a better grip on my possible production rate and succes rate:

• I have been to Tokyo for three weeks in August 2008, for the sole purpose of taking pictures - I shot 67 8x10 images in total - thats a little more than 3 pics a day - see results here ( I have published 27 of these, so that is a 40% ratio!)
• I have been to Hong Kong for one week in March 2009, for the sole purpose of taking pictures - I shot 33 8x10 images in total - that’s almost 5 pics a day - see results here ( I have published 10 of these, so that is a 30% ratio!)
• I have been to New York for two weeks in August 2009 for Holiday - I shot 9 pictures and published none
• During other short trips and local sessions I shot another 20 images

This means that since I started 8x10 large format in the middle of 2008, I only shot 139 images! You remeber Cartier-Bresson, who told us “your first 10.000 images are your worst”? If I apply that to my 8x10 endeavours, that would mean another 140 years of bad imagery. That must not happen!

How much time will I spend on a published image?

• scouting 4hrs
• shooting 3hrs
• prescanning 10images 40mins
• final scanning (2hrs scan time, 20min attendance)
• remove dust and scratches 4hrs
• fine tuning in Photoshop 3hrs
• total: 15 hrs

That would leave me with 9 hrs left for the rest of my life including sleeping and travel, which I have to do quite a lot if I am to visit a 100 cities. Plus this leaves me with absolut no time for a daytime job!

So 1 image published a day is the absolute maximum!

I probably could outsource the scanning and de-dusting process, if I earn enough money - this would leave me with more time for scouting and organizing my online life.

I will put all weels in motion to start on 06.04.2010 so that Day #1000 is on 31.12.2012.