The Book

365 Days of Photographs 2 Book from William Mark Sommer on Vimeo.

The End

The end of my 2nd 365 days of photographs project, I never thought I would be doing this project again, and even said numerous times that I wouldn’t do it. The reason I wanted to get back into working on such an extreme, challenging, unforgiving, and long project was when I dropped out of Art school I though that I needed something to push myself to create more, different and better photographs sense I wasn’t going to be in school for a semester (which ended turning into a year of being out of school).  Starting this project was a breeze by making lots of my preconceived ideas from my notes I took over the month before the project started, but before I could get a few months in I felt like I had lost a lot of creativity and motivation, It just started to strain me and my life. I am a person that is unable to just give up on any thing I put my heart into or had my heart in, so I pushed on to create some photographs that I am really excited on, but it also came with a bunch of ok and so so photos that I didn’t care for as much. I found that no matter how much you can prepare for a project like this you can never know what life will bring you in a year. 

I wanted to make this project a new great photograph every day, but life ended up getting in the way many times over this past year. This years project ended up being much harder and stressful than the first, and extremely draining to my life and my creativity. With that said I am disappointed that I wasn’t able to complete many of the ideas that were on my list, but I am extremely happy with the few ideas that did come to light.  This year was extremely rough on me with relationships and friends, I lost a lot of people who I thought were good friends of mine that turned out not to be. It was also extremely hard losing my Great grandma, she was one of the only people besides my parents who truly cared for me and who was a great person. This year just ended up being a really hard year, even though there was a lot of bad times this year there has also been a lot of good days. 

I will always remember the countless adventures I went on through this whole year, from Portland to Las Vegas, I was able to see so much and experience it with so many people that I love.  There were a lot of amazing adventures up to the Donner Tunnels, around Folsom Lake, San Francisco, Big Sur, all around Nevada, and Yosemite. This year was full of adventures and some really fun days and nights. Even though this year and its 365 project had lots of hardships I wouldn’t trade it for any thing, I have grown again so much through this project and year in knowing more about myself and my art. This year showed me that I need to get out adventure more and see different places and not limit myself by staying in the Sacramento area. At the beginning of 2014 I will be moving to Las Vegas to go finish my degree in photography, and start a new adventure in life. 

I want to thank all my good friends who helped me out on this project, and a special shout out to Chris, Archie, Sean, Lisa, Kyle, John and the RCK// guys for helping me with many of my photos through out this year. I want to specially thank My Family for supporting me through this project; I wouldn’t have been able to do it with out you. I’m not going to say I am never going to do this project again, but for now I am going to go out and enjoy life for a while. Thank you all.
                                                                                                                                            Sincerely,

- William Mark Sommer

Day 365 (December 31st)

The last day of the year. Man I am glad to be done with this project again. In tradition with how I started and finished the 2011 365 project I did a self portrait. I did a silhouette self portrait for the start of this year so this is the silhouette self portrait for the end of the year. In the next couple of weeks I will be releasing the 365 days of photographs 2 book.

Day 364 (December 30th)

Mellow day. I wanted to take probably the last picture of the tree I love to shoot before I move, and it happened to have a really nice sunset to go with it!

Day 363 (December 29th)

This photo goes out to my long time best bud Kyle, you have always been there through thick and thin, I took a photo a lot like this one in 2011 and to see the changes in life and friendships that I have always had a good friend in him.

Day 362 (December 28th)

Kicked it with my good buddy Archie in SF today, we came across this broken mirror that I had to shoot a few pictures of.

Day 361 (December 27th)

I went with Archie up to the pool in Auburn to get a really different picture than what we came up with. This is him in front of a wall with the reflection of the water in the pool. I'm stoked for the video I made to go with this video.