We would love to welcome Anna Hurley to the blog today. Anna is an Unraveled Epxert Artist and Instructor for us here at the Academy. Her course on documenting a 365 is one of our most popular to check out for inspiration. Anna has a way of keepin’ it real in her photography. Nothing feels posed and yet everything feels well thought out and intentional. She is exceptionally incredible at documenting her everyday in unique ways. Today, she is discussing how to complete an hour by hour project and we are stoked to learn from her!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

I am a wife to my wonderful husband of 15 years and a mother of two beautiful full of life kids. They are my reason for documenting our every day, to capture all the moments I can before they grow up too quickly on me. My photography journey began with them and being inspired to capture their lives beautifully.

I am a creative soul, making art makes me happy. I love a good pair of leggings, delicious green tea or chai tea lattes, and sitting curled up under a blanket watching a good show or movie.

FOR MORE INSPIRATION FROM ANNA:
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So you’ve been on a P365 journey and rockin’ it, but you feel the need for a little challenge, or something to change up the pace a little. Have you ever considered trying an Hour by Hour challenge?

An Hour by Hour is a photo journal of your day. The idea is to take one image every hour. They are a great way to document a typical day and really appreciate everything that goes into making it to bedtime haha. Try one once, or even once a month or once a week. Maybe there’s a special day you want to document, an hour by hour is a great tool for any day!

Here are 6 tips that I have come up with to help you attempt your own hour by hour challenge:

Just Begin.

Pick a time frame of when you would like your daily story to start and end. I typically do a 12 hour or so range from when I wake up until bedtime for the kids, anything longer and not much is happening when everyone is in bed and I’m sitting at my computer desk editing. The time frame is up to you.

Set a Reminder.

Try setting a timer as a reminder. If it’s something that will help you track the hours as they go by, use it. But don’t stress out, if you see a great moment happening, capture it and keep going. You might use it for your photo story because you may get lost in what you are doing and forget to capture something in the following hour. And if it was only 45mins after your last hourly capture, that’s alright! If you’re inspired to shoot, do just that. I’ve had 30min gaps, and then also 2hr gaps, as long as you are shooting as close to every hour as you can it’ll be all fine, I promise you won’t mind shorter or longer gaps between each image.

Take Five.

Slow down and take 5 Mins. When your hour has come to shoot, take 5 minutes to observe and shoot, don’t make it too complicated and stress out about trying to get a shot. If you give yourself that 5 minutes and you can’t seem to get your hourly image, step back for 15 minutes and try again. Remember, you don’t have to be rigid about your hours, this is your daily story.

Know What You Want.

What do you want your story to involve? An hour by hour is a daily journal of what you are doing that day, so does that story involve you? Or is it just a documentation of what your children get up to? If the story is of your day with your family, then don’t forget to get in the frame.

Get Up Close.

Include the scene around you, but don’t forget about the details. Not every image needs to showcase everything that is going on, there is so much beauty within the details of your day as well.

Appreciate every image.

There will be those images where you know they’re just snapshots and maybe it’s not your best creation, but even those “boring” images are worthy. Every single image of that day is worthy because it’s part of a timeline to tell your story.

How to Share Your Hour by Hour:

There are a few options for sharing your Hour by Hour Project:

If you have a blog, share it there and tell us about your day.
You can use Blog Stomp to create a grid of images, or a single image with a caption and timestamp.
Use Lightroom to create a grid, and then you can add text timestamps for each image using Photoshop.
You can use Adobe Spark to create a grid of images with a text timestamp.
Make an album on Facebook and create a caption/description for each image with the time and story.

Now I challenge you to try an hour by hour! Pick a day some time this month and see the world around you in a new way. When you’re shooting each hour, you are put in a position of finding the beauty in your everyday life. It may not be as easy as it sounds, documenting your day authentically, but it will get those creative juices flowing and it will push you to see things differently.