Every day for the past 17 years, Dan Hanna has taken two photos of himself with a custom-built rig and a couple of Ricoh film cameras. Now you can watch the video.
In Dan’s own words:
The foundation of the design is 2 wooden rings, each 4 feet in diameter, 4 inches wide and 1/2 inch high. Each of these rings is cut into 4 pieces. The rings themselves symbolize the year and the 4 pieces symbolize the 4 seasons. Each of the 2 rings lie on top of each other and are bolted together. They are rotated relative to each other by 1/8.
Breaking the ring (year) up into 8 overlapping pieces allows me to pack it up and take it with me when I travel. It also makes the ring very stable when bolted together.
I have 2 cameras mounted to the ring opposite each other. When one camera is looking at the front of my face the other camera is looking at the back of my head
The ring is marked off with 365 tic marks which represent the days of the year. The tic marks cause me to look directly at one of the cameras at the Spring and Fall Equinoxes and sideways to the cameras at the Winter and Summer Solstices.
The YouTube clip above only uses photos from every second day to cut the video’s length, but Dan is working on a complete HD video in the future. Remember that every photo was taken on film cameras, and had to be manually scanned in order to create the clip. The guy must have spent an absolute fortune on film development. And if you noticed that there were some photos that were half black in the clip, that was when Dan switched to 200ASA film and his flash wasn’t able to sync up with his adjusted shutter speed.
The end result (or at least the end so far) is mesmerising – watching his goatee disappear and reappear is kind of soothing in a weird way. I can’t wait to see the full video once Dan passes well past his 40s and into his 60s…
Make sure you click through to check out Dan’s rig as well.