The End.

“We came up to the first tower of the bridge, with a plaque proclaiming who had built it; I stopped to read. John Roebling. Aided by his wife, and then his son. He died during construction. But hey, the Brooklyn Bridge might be here for eight hundred years. I wanted to leave something like that behind. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I felt like I had taken the first steps.”  -Ned Vizzini

I'm numb. My stomach is churning and I'm kind of scared. This terrible and endlessly annoying project has been my life for a year, four months, and one day. And honestly, I'm going to miss it a lot.

I never knew how this would feel, how I would feel once the 365 was over. I'm not going to feel guilty anymore for not posting a picture to Facebook or Flickr; I'm not going to feel like I'm letting anyone down (Or letting myself down).

I'm excited to move forward. I'm excited to shoot when I want to shoot and be proud of the work I create in the future. I am proud of so much of my work through the 365 project, but I think I need to step back and not rush anything from now on. I always felt rushed. A rush to edit, a rush to post it at a reasonable time at night so a good amount of people don't miss it.

Thank you to everyone on Facebook and Flickr that has supported me for the past year. Without that support I don't think I would have had the drive to keep posting. This project is all thanks to everyone online and everyone offline. My parents and my friends I owe a huge thank you to for constantly putting up with me and my whining and my complaining about photos. And thank you to the selected amount of friends that I have inflicted trauma upon for some of these photographs. You guys are the best.

I don't really know what else to say except that this has been the best year of my life so far. I have basically documented my entire freshman and first half of sophomore year, and that's really awesome.

I think I have to explain why exactly I chose the Brooklyn Bridge for my last 365 photo. It's not something that I like to advertise, but aside from photography I enjoy writing quite a lot. I wrote a novel in seventh grade (A very bad novel, but a novel). And I've been working on a specific piece since July 21st, 2012 that involves the Brooklyn Bridge. I haven't had a lot of time to work on it between the 365 project and school, but now that the 365 is over I want to focus on it a lot. So that's why I chose the Brooklyn Bridge. I wanted to start a new chapter and incorporate that into the end of this one.

So here is the part where I talk about my day.

I had the best day today with Rachel, Paige, my dad, and my sister Emma; with cameo appearances from my cousin Alex and her girlfriend Audrey. After driving for 2 hours in the car we drove around Brooklyn for about 20 minutes trying to find parking. Once we found a spot we all piled out of the car and started walking to the bridge.

I didn't feel much then. It didn't hit me while walking up there. It didn't hit me when I was setting up my tripod or taking test shots. And it didn't hit me when i was posing and having every single person walking by stare at me funny. It didn't hit me while expanding. I don't really think it has hit me at all yet.

After exiting the bridge and walking down below, walking down underneath the Manhattan Bridge, I heard the train go by. And it wasn't quiet. It was a loud ringing and crashing in my ear, and it sounded like the world was ending. I think I heard Rachel laugh, and I swore Paige said something, but all I heard was the train. 

We met up with Alex and Audrey at the restaurant, and we ate and what not. We left and started walking to the waterfront and we took photos and it started to snow lightly. It was cold and I couldn't feel my hands. I heard cars honking and I looked up at all the buildings trying to picture people in there carrying on with their lives.

After exploring for a little bit Alex and Audrey went to a flower shop and we went downtown to the weekly flea market. It was so hectic and lively in there. It was so interesting and awesome and I wish I was allowed to have taken my camera in there. Everything was so expensive and I didn't buy anything. Paige actually bought me a gift for a friend that I have to pay her back for. That was it though. I didn't feel the need to ask my dad for anything. (Well, I did ask him for this beautiful vintage dress, but it was expensive and I knew he wasn't going to say yes.)

After we left the flea market we drove home and I spent the entire car ride home expanding today's photo. I'll be honest and say I didn't really edit it after that. The picture is mostly SOOC. We listened to upbeat music that I compiled into a CD and it ended almost exactly when we got home.

And now here we are, I've spent almost a half hour writing this and I'm so scared to post it. I'm scared that people are going to be disappointed. I'm proud of this last photo. It's almost exactly how I pictured it in my head, which has rarely ever happened in the 365.

Sorry for making you read all of this, If you have read all the way to the end and you're coming from my Facebook I want you to comment with your favorite picture from the 365. You can link it, describe it, or tell me the name if you happen to remember. That would mean a lot to me.

Thank you and now for the rest of the night until Rachel leaves, we are going to watch Netflix. I'm excited to now have free time and watch TV shows and be able to write and not worry about photography for a little while.

Here are some pictures from today.