TL;DR: I got the inspiration for this challenge and some features of my website, like the Stats page, from Florian Ziegler.

In 2016, my dear friend Tomas convinced me to attend WordCamp Europe after he attended for the first time in 2015. Ever since then, it has become a tradition for us and I haven’t missed any WCEU. It’s the first big event of every summer for me, a good reason to visit a city I probably never visited before and to see the people from the community in person. I’ve been a volunteer in each event except for my first one and that helps you meet more people. WCEU always boosts my mood. However, it looks like I’ll be missing it this year sadly.

Apparently, Florian has been attending ever since the first WCEU. He even lead the photography team in 2017 and 2018. I didn’t have a camera back then and wasn’t joining the photography team so I found out about this later.

After attending the same three-day event seven times, you’d think we met at WCEU, right? Wrong. 🙂

On the last day of our Turin trip, we took one last stroll around the center with Tomas and headed to the bus station to take the bus that’d get us to the airport. The bus wasn’t there but the line of people was. We joined the line and started waiting.

Since it was my last moments in the city, I was eager to get some more photos before I left. While I was snapping away, I heard Tomas asking someone “Do you guys have the same cameras?”. I turned around and saw this guy with a Leica M10-P on his neck. I said, “No, no. That is the real thing (rangefinder). Mine (X100VI) is more like a wanna-be”. Then Tomas asked Florian if he was only shooting black and white as well and the answer was “mostly!”. We talked a bit more about cameras and that’s how I met Florian.

Then, he told me about his 366 project—a challenge where he documents his daily life and shares at least one photo on his blog. He was about halfway into it when we met. I like how you land on the most recent post when you visit his blog and then navigate from there. Straight to the point.

Then I saw his Stats page with the monochrome ratio, top cameras, and focal lengths… I loved it. I only saw these kinds of stats in Lightroom and that’s for all the photos I added there. Not the ones that actually “make it”. I think the challenge idea was planted in my head at that moment and the stats page sold me.

In the meantime, Florian released zines from the photos he took for this project. It was a four-part series and as you can see from today’s photo, I got the first and the last one. His storytelling skills are amazing. Don’t believe me? Check out this post https://florian.photo/2024-11-03 and click “View All”.

In my opinion, for someone who’s always carrying a camera, taking one alright snap a day should be possible. On special days like New Year’s Eve, it should be possible to get more than one. But during the NYE, I somehow took very boring photos. The only one I liked was Branching Out. The frustration made me think “I have to change this” and what’s a better way than forcing yourself to share a photo every day?

The main difference is I just keep the challenge in mind. Whenever something catches my eye, I snap a photo. This seems to be working as I’ve made it to the 42nd day fairly easy.

I wanted to make this post for a while. Because I feel like If I hadn’t met him at the bus stop that day, I wouldn’t have this blog. As a WordPress person, I think it’s only right that I blog. Now I’m discovering new blogs, spending time on improving mine, and honestly, sharing my photos on social media is becoming less and less appealing.

Plus, at the end of this challenge, I’m planning to make zines, another idea I got from Florian. 🙂