Remember those home videos from when we were kids? There’s the shaky, grainy footage of you crawling after the dog, blowing the candles out at your 6th birthday party, or that family vacation with everyone in swim suits. Maybe those videos got pulled out at graduation or your wedding. But now they are all on tapes in a box in your parents’ basement, probably no longer watchable even if you still owned a VCR.

As parents, we love taking videos of our kids. Instead of a box full of VHS tapes, we all have phones and hard-drives full of little videos. With our phones in our pockets we can press record during all the little moments, not just during the big events. But if we don’t do anything with those clips, they are just left in the digital equivalent of a box in the basement.

As a photographer, I relentlessly document my children’s lives through photos. Most of the time I prefer photos as a medium over video because you just need one image to remember an event — it’s more powerful in its ability to preserve and instantly recall a memory. But there are certain things photography can’t capture the way videography can. Some memories need sound and movement: the way a little baby coos at their parents, those fast crawling babies or tipsy toddlers, the first wobbly attempts at riding a bike, the little songs a preschooler sings, the adorable way they mispronounce words, laughter. Oh, all the giggles and all the laughter! I never want to forget the way my son laughs. So I take videos too.

Two years ago I came across the 1 Second Everyday app. I started my first daily video project January 1, 2015. It was easy to just take a small clip of something every day with my phone, whenever I remembered, of whatever my kids were up to. At the end of the first year I had a real keepsake — a 6 minute video full of giggles, squeals, fun and laughter.  (you can see the 2015 1SE video here). Once I got into the habit of recording my seconds every day, it was easy to keep going in 2016. My One Second Everyday 2016 video was even better.

This year I’ve joined One Second a Day group where other photographers are recording their videos with DSLR. I decided to take on the challenge for 2017 of creating my One Second Everyday video using my camera instead of my phone. Since I’m already doing a 365 photography project, I pretty much always have my camera with me anyway. I consider these two projects like twins. I love seeing them both coming together simultaneously, one in black and white still images and the other in moving colour footage.

I’ve put together the footage for January so far and posted it on my Vimeo account. This is my first attempt at this process and I have a lot of room for improvement. I’m excited to see my progress through the year. I hope to have another memorable compilation for 2017.

Make sure you follow along this month’s blog circle for our One Second a Day group! There are some amazing photographers and videographers in the group and I’ve been so inspired by their work. Check out Jenn Rusby’s video

I challenge anyone interested in this kind of project to download the 1SE app and start right away! It’s so worth it to have a way of piecing together these little bits of your life that you never want to forget.