The holidays may be in full swing, but for many creatives, this season is just as much about dreaming and planning as it is cookies and jolly movies. The New Year symbolizes a fresh slate, with myriad creative photo and video pursuits to enjoy. Goals and business mapping are essential for creative businesses to thrive. Equally important is experimentation with your own personal photography projects.
We scoured the Internet and social media to find creators’ most interesting and out-of-the-box personal New Year’s projects. From daily sketches to photographing strangers, here are eight creative project ideas to try in 2024.
Photograph Every Sunrise
In January 2019, Michigan-based photographer Bugsy Sailor set an intention: watch every sunrise for one year. It started as a 365-day commitment, but evolved into a streak of 1,718 sunrises with near-daily photos from every morning. Yet imagery was only part of the equation:
“It has never been about the photos….It has been about the wind on my face, the sand between my toes, and feeling the sunrise while being present in nature.”
Sailor says on his website, Year of the Sunrise
To experience this meditative creative practice, find an easily reachable sunrise perch—or sunset if you’re more of a night owl—and set your alarms (and charge your gear) accordingly.
Take a Daily Self-Portrait
From Jan. 11, 2000 to Jan. 11, 2020, photographer Noah Kalina took daily self-portraits then stitched two decades’ worth of imagery together via an eight-minute video. The final video garnered over 12 million views on YouTube; publications like CNN and Business Insider featured the work of art, too. Kalina released periodic videos over the course of the project, which he started at age 19 and finished at 39. He eventually launched the Everyday project website to house the historic imagery in one place.
While starting a 20-year project can feel daunting, you can dabble into the craft in baby steps. Try documenting life with a self-portrait every day, or every week, in 2024. Add your own personal spin to it, such as a small text box to describe your mood or emotion of the day. By Dec. 31, 2024, your regular portraits could become a journal of your year.
Join the 100 Strangers Project
Meeting new people is both intimidating and enriching. To make it easier in 2024, try the 100 Strangers project. Like Humans of New York, the brainchild of photographer Brandon Stanton, the 100 Strangers project challenges photographers to get out in their community, take portraits of strangers, then share the imagery and stories via the project’s Flickr group.
The project isn’t about snapping 100 photos as quickly as possible. It’s about meeting these strangers, learning their stories, and, of course, getting their permission to photograph them. Once you do, you can share your project updates via the Flickr group, which has over 15,000 members and 47,500 photos. The group is centered on improving social and technical photography skills, particularly for those interested in portrait photography.
Sketch Daily Memories
Your camera is great for pausing moments, but it’s not the only tool with time-freezing capabilities. This is something writer, photographer, and illustrator Candace Rose Rardon learned through her project 40 Days of Moments. For Easter season’s Lent in 2017, Rardon decided to give up her camera for 40 days—relying instead on her sketchbook. She sketched one moment from every day for nearly two months. The project taught Rardon to slow down and view her surroundings differently:
“I love how sketching makes time stand still, and how it can help us live more fully and deeply in each moment.”
Rardon says in a post about the project.
If you can’t give up your camera entirely, try swapping your camera for a sketchbook even one day a week—say, Sunday—for 2024. Find a scene, or recall one from the week via your camera, then sketch it in a cozy, quiet spot. Spend the next week searching for a sketch scene, then repeat. Rardon used hand sketching, but you can also try a drawing tablet.
Collect 100 Rejections
So often, creative business goals center on nailing the big wins—landing a brand deal, securing a new client, or nailing a fresh partnership. Yet author and podcast host Valorie Clark suggests a different approach: collect rejections. Try to receive 100 rejections within the year. This can normalize rejection and may reward you when putting yourself out there for big, lofty projects. Follow Clark’s Collected Rejections newsletter, including the 100-rejection-challenge check-ins, for accountability and community.
While Clark’s newsletter centers on writing, the concept of gathering rejections applies to virtually all crafts. To use it in your own business, create a pitch spreadsheet to log your outreach. Include a column for projects that are accepted, and one for projects that are rejected. Tally up the rejections and review it every month, then ask important questions: Are you pushing yourself enough? What have you learned along the way? For extra inspiration, watch Jia Jiang’s TEDX Talk on lessons from his own 100 days of rejection pursuit.
Try 365 Days of Art
Inspired by the book “365 Days of Art: A Creative Exercise for Every Day of the Year,” YouTuber The Cassie Projects spent 2023 sharing daily art projects—from sketching sounds to drawing simple shapes using the wrong hand. The challenge was designed to help creatives dabble into new art forms. It’s even better if you share the process on social media to engage followers and grow your community.
Grab your copy of the book and the book’s listed supplies, then set the intention to follow through with roughly ten minutes of art per day. Follow The Cassie Projects’ experience to see what your year of art will unfold.
Photograph with Monthly Color Themes
Try a twist on the one-photo-a-day concept—often known as the 365 project—with a unique, colorful challenge. Find a specific hue to photograph every day, week, or month, and do so consistently. Searching for these themed colors pushes you to examine the world through a different lens. Photographer Courtney Slazinik of Click It Up A Notch learned all about this through her “building a rainbow” project in 2017. She snapped a photo with a specific hue every day, following ROYGBIV order and repeating for the month. The result was a rainbow-hued collection of photographs that go beyond your everyday snaps.
You can mimic Slazinik’s experience for the first month of the year, or make it a full-year project with monthly color themes. Both options will challenge you to seek unexpected subjects to photograph—such as a yellow sunrise, yellow bananas, and a friend in a yellow shirt one month, then purple grapes, a purply-pink night sky, and violet flowers the next. Curate your photos via the 365 Project website. By the end of the year, you’ll have a visually stunning collection to enjoy.
Create a Timelapse Compilation
In 2015, artist and filmmaker Panagiotis Filippou used his Nikon kit to create a viral night-sky timelapse consolidating one year of nightscapes into a five-minute video—all dedicated to his father, who lost the battle with cancer. The film, Greek Skies, won multiple awards for its astronomical awe and heartfelt backstory.
You can replicate the 365-day timelapse in the New Year, too. Find a subject that interests you, such as night skies like Filippou or landscape photos in your nearby park. Then, take one photo of the exact same scene every day to show how the landscape changes through the seasons. Or, snap a compilation of scenes—such as different spots in your neighborhood park each day—then stitch the film together when the year ends.
