Toy Pic Of The Day (2012)

[Click above montage to view TOYWARS]
I remember at the onset of toy-bloggery on this bloodspot, I had a "Toy Pix A Day" project going, whereby I literally post an image of a toy, once every day. I had lanned to do so for at least an entire year (inspired by the myriad of '360 Projects' all around the www).

It started out as posed scenes and even dioramas, rather than just plain snaps of toys' faces, then it slowly degenerated to every-other-day, to "none". I just could not sustain the need to posed and snap dioramas daily! Especially when coverage of news took over my daily efforts, and the project essentially dissolved into nothingness.



I remember very clearly those moments were the most "creative" I had with my toys. Posing them and playing with simple lighting concepts, creating a scene which perhaps told a story (I was knee deep in filmmaking and even started to lecture about film at a local arts collage too). Besides creating "content" for the blog, it was also my default ability to create images, even if they were about 'toys'.

I would follow a particular "theme" for a while (or until ideas dried up) and moved on to the next, and the next - I have an extremely short attention span, hence the only way I could keep at this project, was to differentiate them from series to series. While the primary aim was "Story-telling with pictures of toys", it worked for me when I attempted a quasi-anthology approach to them, just like in the comicbooks!



There is something "profoundly satisfying" about sharing images of your toys, of communicating 'stories' using images of toys - and while I was not known for my stupendous photography skills (i used the same point-and-snap digi-camera for a decade), I liked where I was going, and what I was doing.

And instinctively it was not about "what I own" or showing off my collection, but the project spurred me to create images of my own, and stories untold - which one fine day I was going to tell said stories of. And I was amassing images, moreso than I had ever posted on the blog, actually.



One thing led to another, basically all efforts came to a halt one fine day when my G3 sputtered it's last byte and blacked-out. Most of my high-res images were lost along with my crashed computer (along with a decade's worth of stored images and video) which I had not backed up at all, and I made the mistake of uploading smaller images of the original images online (not wanting them to be downloaded and used) … and not long after said crash, I fell into Stroke, and have been looking back ever since, at a phantom notion, now but failed memories of empty promises…


And while I have acknowledged (still working on "accepted") I cannot get those images back, what I am trying to do now, is instead to continue the #toypicsaday, thanks to my Instagram! Creating new memories to replace the old ones, and these days it is now more about "toy faces" rather than dioramas, at the very least I hope to get back into enjoying owning my toys again, and sharing them with folks via online images.

But this time, I'd remember to keep multiple backups!

Follow my images on Twitter with the harshtag #toypicoftheday or click on THIS LABEL, when I begin to post them again on this blog.

Cheers :)
Andy