What would you do to help yourself remember every day of your life that you can?

What I started doing is what many people might consider a fad by now, but for me it wasn't about the fad. Nor was it about trying to go viral with something. It was about being genuinely interested in the idea that maybe there's a small something I can do which will help me remember any given day by seeing only a moment from it...even years later.

Many people have 365-day photo projects they decide to undertake, and while I felt like that would definitely be a worthy project to set out on, I decided for the much more concise one-second-per-day project which spanned from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2012. Not only does it help me remember as many days as possible, but it makes for one hell of a cool thing to reminisce over.

The first year.

I originally got the idea from seeing the video of someone else who had done something similar the year before, and it turned out to be a great video. Unfortunately, I can't remember who it was that did it now, because the video has since disappeared from the site it was hosted on. Ever since I began, I also noticed another person doing them as well, and had a video posted in 2012 that spanned from birthday-to-birthday. His name is Cesar Kuriyama.

^{Cesar Kuriyama}

Cesar was who created the app "1 Second Everyday", which many of you may have seen, and even had his own TED talk about it.

Granted, I didn't actually use his app to create my videos. I used Sony Vegas instead. I have to have the total-control a program like that gives you, i.e. frame rates, my own fonts, resolution settings, etc. This also allowed me to mix cameras, as I have 4 of them I tend to rotate through. Nevertheless, Cesar enjoyed my video and we talked briefly. He seemed more interested in 1SE creators who were using his apps, but he did refer to me as a "power user" when helping share my video to the world. He even asked me to be a judge for a contest he had in mind, (which I don't believe ever materialized).

It wasn't long after that people began posting one-second-everyday videos left and right. One of whom was from a gentleman named Sam Cornwell, who posted a video showing 1 second of every day of the first year of his son's life. His video went super-viral with over a million views in about a week. It's currently sitting at nearly 3 million.

Before posting that, Sam originally contacted me after I posted my video at the beginning of that year to ask how I had done the titling and so forth, because he had plans on creating that specific video once his son was born (a day before my own birthday, in fact). We've since been friends-across-the-pond on Facebook.

^{Sam Cornwell}

Following the relative success of the 2012 video, I decided to make another one for 2013. Not knowing what the year would hold for us, it was around the end of March when we discovered we were having a baby. That year's video was the most successful one to date, and I owe that to my little boy.

All told for both years, I was featured on people.com, huffingtonpost.com, buzzfeed.com, cbsnews.com, petapixel.com... twice, and laughingsquid.com not once, not twice, but a total of THREE times if we include the third video, the one for 2014 as seen below.

However, after the third year, I decided I was finished. I figured 3 was enough. 2014 brought such events as my father passing away, my mother having cancer for a 3rd time in less than 20 years, as well as us living in a place we were forced to choose because our previous landlords decided they wanted to convert our apartment building (of 4 residences total) into an office building. It was a very un-fun year.

But I'm an idiot.

So much stuff happened in 2015, such as the fact that my mom KICKED cancer for a 3rd time in her life, also I bought my first house for me and my family. Aside from the year my son was born, 2015 came in at a close second....and I should've had a camera running.

Thus, "Just A Second 2016" is currently under construction.

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applecrisp (56) · 8 years ago

Awesome Video! Thanks for sharing it and the extended story behind it :)

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giftedgaia (63) · 8 years ago

Jan 27th 2013 = THIS guy right here :-)

nikrevot (35) · 8 years ago

Very cool, but, don't be hard on yourself about 2015. What you've done so far is pretty incredible and maybe taking that year off from "running the camera" was important in ways you'll only realize later on!

One Second At A Time

But I'm an idiot.

Thus, "Just A Second 2016" is currently under construction.