OCOLOY: A One Camera, One Lens, One Year Project
With 2016 just around the corner, many photographers will be dusting off the cameras they’ve been neglecting and making New Year’s resolutions in an attempt to rekindle their creativity. If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, here’s a good one: do a OCOLOY project. It requires using just One Camera and One Lens for One Year.
Oh, and the challenge also included making a single standard-size print every day.
After seeing the challenge, Italian photographer Massimo Cristaldi brought the idea to Sikanie, a local photography group in Catania, Sicily, that was formed back in 1999. The photographers decided to give the project a shot, both individually and as a group.
They committed to using a single camera and lens combo to shoot about 2 rolls of film per week (roughly 300 photos per month). Each photographer would choose and print just 8 of those images.
Here’s where the “group” aspect comes in: the photographers decided to meet up once a month to share and talk about their prints. “Put them all on the floor, touch them, feel, for real, face to face, not in the virtual world,” says Cristaldi. With group feedback, the photographers edited their collection of prints down to just 6 of their very best photos.
Those photos were just exhibited in a collective show at a local photography festival, which was visited by Italian photography great Mario Cresci:
Here are some of the photos that appeared in the show (click each photo to see the photographer’s set):
Finally, here’s a video by Domenico Fabiano with a behind-the-scenes look at this group’s OCOLOY project:
So if you’re looking for a photography project to tackle in 2016, think about trying a OCOLOY project. Better yet, get some friends together and work on it as a group. You’ll shoot a lot, have great discussions about your photos, and will have a potential exhibition on your hands at the very end.
Image credits: Header illustration based on photo by Joe Lanman
