Photographer captured one image of Cambridge every day for 13 years | Hacker News Reader

Photographer captured one image of Cambridge every day for 13 years

smithsonianmag.com

211 pointsBrajeshwar45 comments

As a Cambridge resident (and for friends who no longer live here) his photos have been exceptional. Some personal favourites:

Symbolic of the changing nature of Cambridge. This was the closing day for a furniture store next door to a house where my wife once lived:

https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04...

The large open air unheated lido:

https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12...

Punters in the snow:

https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...

His photos of deserted Cambridge streets at the start of the pandemic lockdown - somewhere that’s always busy - were particularly poignant.

The consistency and quality of this project is impressive. This shows how much can be achieved if one just puts a little effort into a project every day.

At first I thought it was a project like this taking a photo of the same scene every day and making the changes of it over the years visible. But the variety of scenes is impressive and I can almost feel the pressure he must have felt every day to deliver his photo of the day.

Incredible quality! I also expected a time lapse, but the variety and consistency while maintaining beautiful composition & colour is truly impressive.

I'd say the seeing the photographs themselves is nice:

https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/

Hug of death may take it away, however.

This is a great set and a fun reminder that Cambridge life doesn't revolve around the undergraduates (however much I might have thought it did at the time).

Thanks for sharing this link! These are a lovely set of photographs.

Interesting that he chose to photograph in (1) vertical on (2) a wide lens.

(1) Sceneries in general tend to feel horizontal. But I suppose you can still find vertical perspectives with street photography given that buildings are rather vertical as well.

(2) Wide angle means more coverage, showing more people in the shot, which tends to make composition difficult. Typically a good photo focuses on a subject. However, Martin Bond manages to compose and focus on a subject.

Also, wide angles introduce distortion of subjects along the edge of the photo. That shows in his photos, but are not too distracting.

On his site [0] the collection is subtitled 'a portrait every day'; I think it's very deliberate, well obviously it would be, but I mean I think it's intended to be 'a portrait' where the subject is Cambridge rather than a person, in a way that just taking a photo vertically (though still a deliberate choice) isn't.

[0]: https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/

Says on his website he shot everything with a Leica Q2, if he shot with the Original Q before the Q2 came out in '19, then he shot the whole project 28mm f1.7 as that's the lens glued to the Q series.

That's not just "A man stands beside a closed doorway" - he's a porter: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/nov/04/working-life-u...

See also Jamie Livingston:

> Jamie Livingston (October 25, 1956 – October 25, 1997) was a New York-based photographer, film-maker and circus performer. Between March 31, 1979, and October 25, 1997, the day of his death, he took a single picture nearly every day with a Polaroid SX-70 camera.[1][2]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston

> NYC Photographer Jamie Livingston shot a Polaroid photo everyday for 6,000 days, or, roughly, 18 years. The first shot was of his girlfriend at the time on March 13, 1979.

> His last photo was on his deathbed, dying of cancer on October 25, 1997.

* https://www.chasejarvis.com/blog/a-polaroid-a-day-for-6000-d...

* https://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com

A lot of people take it up as a project:

* https://photzy.com/how-to-create-a-one-photo-a-day-project/

One fellow (Sam Javanrouh) in Toronto did it for ten years:

> I started [daily dose of imagery] on July 4th, 2003. I posted a photo each day since then. When I launched ddoi, there was no Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, iPhone, iPad, Android, 500px or Instagram.

> [daily dose of imagery] will remain as is and the whole archive of it will be available as long as I can afford to keep it. The photos will still be available for purchase I’ve also uploaded the whole 10 years archive into a new flickr account which is a great way to browse with large thumbnails. Bookmark it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ddoi-archive/

* http://blog.topleftpixel.com/2013/07/04/and-thats-a-wrap/

I followed him on The Socials (via RSS/Atom) and it was always top quality stuff; no real 'filler' / fluff.

I have seen several others, such as the girl whose father took her photos growing up from age 0 to 20. Another has a video every day on her birthdays, or was it her first day of school?

I wanted to do something but realized I could not do that for various reasons (travel, work, etc). However, I take enough photos regularly, and I think by the time my kids grow up, there will be good enough or even way better technology to parse through our photo collection and spit out the variations we like -- through the years, school days, birthdays, etc. -- a customized version of Moments.

So conceivably, there could be a web page the collates several different people’s daily updates?

This being the web there’s probably several, maybe even a Reddit.

Every birtday 0 to 22:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ng9ykEtwS0

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Lotte

* http://www.franshofmeester.nl

Wow, I'd never seen that before. Really well done. As a father of a 17 year old this hits home in a powerful way. It lends credence to the notion that the idea of a 'self' is an illusion.

Reminds me of Jonathan Mann[0], who makes a song every day.

I remember him from the song about the iPhone 4 antenna[1], the one Steve played at a keynote. Recently I've stumbled upon his YouTube channel and was shocked that he still, to this day continues with one song a day. It's very impressive to me.

What I find even more interesting, is that he's not some social media star, he usually gets 100-200 views on those videos. He does it for himself.

BTW, he also made the outro for Accidental Tech Podcasts, which has some listeners on this forum :)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@JonathanMann

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4

Anecdotally, that iPhone 4 issue effected everyone I knew that got one. Hearing that song felt like gaslighting (not really). Weird. Strange times.

Anecdotally I've used that phone caseless for 4 years and was never able to reproduce the issue, nor do I know about it affecting anyone I know.

It's weird. But anyway, iPhone 4 became an incredibly popular phone, so the problem (while obviously existant) couldn't have been that widespread.

Also Harry Orlyk who does a painting every day: https://issuu.com/ininkny/docs/2023_april_518_profiles_magaz...

From the about page on his site [1], this seems like it was intended to be a 365-day project that kept going! Pretty cool!

The intro page [2] as some more info:

>There is nothing didactic in the photographs; they have a relaxed tone, are often sympathetic, often celebratory, often funny, never malicious. They are as careful as they are spontaneous, as observant as they are generous – there is no general theme, no general point being made except that their very specificity and variety points to the universal business of being alive. All together, they show us that however beautiful Cambridge is, however ancient its gatehouses, however medieval its lanes, or still and green its courts, it is also a place where students and strangers, tourists and locals, vault and dance and play.

1. https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/about-a-cambridge-diary-2/ 2. https://www.acambridgediary.co.uk/about-a-cambridge-diary/

Those photos really aren’t bad at all.

that’s quite an understatement.

They’re really good! I’m sure they picked the highlights but they’re excellent.

In 2019, after six years living in Cambridge, I moved to Seattle. A few weeks before the move I stumbled across these pictures as postcards in a local shop. They perfectly captured life in Cambridge, everything from punts on the Cam watching fireworks to jogging past cows on the green. I bought a dozen, and kept them on my desk in Seattle for a while as a reminder. Thanks for the memories!

How have you found the the transition from Cambridge to Seattle? I’m considering a similar move.

Microsoft?

There's a lot I could say, but for now I need to keep it brief. The practical side of the transition (visa, bank account, social security number, renting, etc.) was a lot of work, but it was worth it. The area around Seattle is vastly different to Cambridge (for starters, it's not flat), and there's so many outdoor activities to do, such as hiking and skiing. It's not as wet as people make it out to be, but you'll want to layer up, and it is wetter than Cambridge. It's generally quite cyclable within the city, and there are good cycle trails further afield. The bike lanes are improving, but it helps to have an ebike for the hills. There's more board game shops, and surprisingly it's easier to get a good cup of tea. I'm actually back in Cambridge now, but feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.

Does anyone know what the two women in the last photo are eating? It looks sort of like a hot dog bun but slightly longer and wider.

Looks like hot dogs given the sauce selection. I didn't know there was a set length for hot dog buns.

They're baguettes. It would be super weird to have a hotdog in a cafe like that.

There are two lengths I'm familiar with though I'm not an expert, the short for regular hot dogs one commonly sees on supermarket shelves in the USA and the long for foot long hot dogs and those breads in the photograph appear longer than the long or maybe just much wider than the long ones I've seen. Also, having a hot dog at a sit down restaurant would be slightly unusual for two adults in my experience, it's more a street/fair food or sports audience vendor food for people on the go that is easily eaten without a plate and utensils for the most part.

They are sold in England with the French name baton:

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/256122878

It’s possible this is derived from an actual French name for this kind of short baguette, but it might also just be that someone thought it sounded French-ish, and that French people use no such word.

They are usually made to order from tubs of mayonnaise based fillings and pre-chopped salad. Here’s a closeup of one in its natural habitat:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g186225-d17303...

Maybe it's translated to English -- a conductor's baton in French is a baguette after all.

Lived with a French guy in college and have found it's easy to mistake "baton" with "putain".

Very helpful photo there. The ladies appear to have nearly empty baguettes from the angle of the photo. This reminds me of the French derived Banh Mi that is available in areas of California and Texas that I have lived due to the expat Vietnamese populations.

A baton is a "stick" in French. We do not use it for food, and the british are often using random French words to sound fancy.

Judging from the sauces and tea, it’s probably some sort of breakfast roll (containing a variation of egg, bacon, and sausage).

They are baguettes. They’re eating at the Copper Kettle and these look like their ‘breakfast baguettes’

Yes, that’s definitely the Copper Kettle.

More interesting than the food, though, is the background. Those who aren’t familiar with Cambridge will see King’s College in the background, across the street, which many may know from the BBC’s Carols from King’s.

Really like the color, would like to copy the preset. Any suggestions?

Open it in PS, use the curves to make it color neutral. Reverse engineer from that. Or just do it by the eyes. There are countless YouTube tutorials on how to copy color grading.

Photoshop has a Match Colour tool built in. Look on YouTube for a tutorial, it seems to work pretty well.

Both the framing and the colors were the first two things that immediately struck me. The colors reminded me a bit of Leica glass that I use on my A7s, and on his site he mentions Leica Q2, so bingo.

Leica glass is generally on the "cold" side; e.g. I use also Zeiss lenses and they show much warmer tones and also have a different tonal reproduction (i.e. darker / brighter parts) where the Leica stuff seems to be less "dramatic". Maybe that helps already as a general idea what to try out.

England, not Massachusetts, for anyone who was wondering.

There's only one Cambridge anyway :)

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