Yes. You. Thank you for following along or looking at my photos to whatever extent you have. The likes, reactions, and comments are noticed and appreciated. Always. It’s validating.
This is the last of the daily black and white photos for a year. I’m afraid I have no grand conclusion or epiphany. It’s been mostly fun, and I’m glad I did it. I think I have learned and improved as a photographer both from the discipline of daily posting as well as the discipline of black and white. But I don’t feel a need to continue. In fact, I think doing so would hold me back from some of the other things I want to pursue.
So what can you expect from me in 2025?
Less.
I’m not going to be posting to social media or updating my website daily. But I will still be doing both reasonably frequently. I want to focus a bit more on quality over quantity. Making photos is easy. I’m thankful for this. But this ease of photographing has made making photos that resonate, that are poetically sequenced, and that are worth more than a quick flick while scrolling by on a phone hard. I want to make things that are worth stopping and spending some time with. That means being harder on myself about what I make and what I share. So I’ll be sharing less.
Expect more links to my website vs direct posts to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Social media has been an amazing way for me to connect with other photographers and artists and to share my photos. But I’m increasingly disappointed in the experience of looking at photos on a phone and on social media, and I want to move more of the creative work I share onto a platform I fully control.
Sharing work on my website and sharing more infrequently will also make it easier for me to write about my photos and about photography, and this is one of my goals for the year ahead. On one hand, I want my photos to speak for themselves. On the other, I want to offer more gateways for people to understand and engage with the processes and thoughts that shape my photographic practice. This will be a challenge for me, but I think it might also be rewarding.
And while social media and the web have their time and place, I think the best way to experience photography is physically. The tactile act of holding and viewing printed photographs is special to me, and I want to give myself that gift with my own photos more often, as well as sharing it with others. So I hope to print more. A lot more. I’m not entirely sure what form that will take (small prints, large prints, zines, books, exhibits, etc.), but I’ll let you know when I have printed things to share.
Finally, on the subject of making more work that has more meaning, I want to photograph more people. You might have noticed some portraits towards the end of the daily black and white project. It’s been rewarding to photograph some friends and family and to share them. If you would be interested in being photographed, or you have someone you know or love that you would like to be photographed with, feel free to connect with me. Send me a message on social media or email dan.culberson@gmail.com. Let’s meet up and make art together in the real world.
Thanks again for looking at the photos. I take photos because I’m trying to communicate something I’m unable to communicate with words. Something more abstract and more powerful. I’m not sure I succeed very often, if ever, but the making of it makes me happy. I’ll be going down the road and doing it as long as I’m able. AI can make amazing pictures that can fool the most critical eyes. AI can never replace the act of going out into the world, looking at it very closely, and then bringing back a two dimensional representation that freezes a moment in time to say “Look here. This is what I’ve found. It means something to me in this context.” The process is important to me. I hope by looking at my little pictures, the result of this process, maybe you find something that means something sometimes too.
Happy new year.