This is the beauty of the iPhone: I am standing at the register of a Crate & Barrel outlet store with my wife. The spot-directed cast of the light above us is creating this amazing composition in front of us, and before the clerk could get the chance to wrap this lamp in the brown paper seen in the background, I have my phone out, shot taken, and cropped, all before I hand over my credit card to pay for the thing.

I take issue with how we disrupt nature in a lot of ways; however, the visuals of math (e.g. bezier curves, angles, elegant theories) are hugely appealing to me. This arrangement of shapes and color wouldn’t occur in a forest or a desert. At least, not as many times as it does in a mall parking lot.

A friend of mine from art school informed me that if I turned this photo upside down those trees would be “sky carrots.” I don’t necessarily give my photos names, especially ones in the POTD project, but if I did this would most certainly be called “Sky Carrots.”

By the way, no holiday is sacred. This was taken on Independence Day 2014. It was lovely outside.

The two beautiful features of the Canon S100 is its size and its SLR-grade shooting modes. With this camera I could easily set up bracketing (the option to take three photos at different exposures, useful for later applying an HDR effect) and sit the camera down on a surface and let it take as many shots as I wanted.

It was getting really stormy on this particular night outside the Princeton Market Fair mall, and the sky was threatening to open at any moment with thunder and lightning being unleashed about half a mile away. I wanted to get some shots of the approaching inclement weather and discovered, by accident, the amazing reflective effect from the top of my car. I would later add some motion blur and exaggerate the darkness to arouse the ominous atmosphere.

This was a proof of execution. With this photo it was deemed possible to shoot, edit, watermark, and post a photo completely on the iPhone. I did not have to worry about posting a photo if I was not at the computer. That bit of practical convenience made the idea sit comfortably that I’d be posting a new photo every day.

This was shot in a restaurant called Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse during my mother-in-law’s birthday. If you’ve never eaten there, then you’ve never had a perfect steak before.

It may be pretentious to claim this, but this photo, to me, represented a new beginning with this POTD project. It only seemed natural to include myself in the first photo as a way to advertise that no matter what rules I break (not following the traditional method of posting a photo taken that same day, not always leaving a photo “as is”), each photo is a reflection of what I saw or what appeals to me visually. It’s all about my perspective, and reflecting how I see the world.

The original photo was taken while I was getting my oil changed at Honda of Princeton, though this particular location is right outside Princeton airport, where I was hoping to get some interesting shots with my Canon S100. It was treated to HDR and spot areas were “given” more grass to hide visual distractions.

I particularly like the toilet paper on the grass. The brilliant green of the grass is interrupted by this symbol of man-made waste. It’s a common theme I play with in a lot of my photography.

My sister is responsible for me starting a POTD project. She was well into her fifth year of posting a Photo of the Day on her Facebook page when I started bothering her, asking how she was able to keep up the energy and find the time to post something every day. I could never do it the same way she does. My biggest problem is creative burnout. I know myself well enough to understand that I can only come up with so many new ideas within a given period of time before I tap out and have to take a break to recharge. What made me start the POTD project was realizing this very behavior.

If it was easy for me to suffer burnout from a constant demand of creativity, then all I needed to do was take advantage of my creative moments and shoot as much as I can in those periods. Then, over the next few days or weeks, release a photo from the period, one at a time. This doesn’t exactly fit within the original POTD framework, but I try not to post an image that is more than two months old. This way I don’t need to care about when exactly a photo was shot. The year and the season are enough for me to recall the moment.

This is also known as “Interleaved Posting.” This is not to say this method should be used in every instance. Sometimes it is better to reply above or below the quoted text. Use your best judgement to dictate what is appropriate, or use this guide to help you gauge the situation.

Prank websites have been built on this very grievance:

• Just Fucking Google it
• Let Me Google That For You

A general rule of UI design is not to create buttons that closely match or duplicate each other’s functions. Redundant buttons produce clutter and cause confusion, taking away from the user experience. However, in this case, developers working with long-existing platforms (like e-mail) will stick with existing features, even if they are redundant.

Think of it like a balancing scale of user confusion. On one side: the confusion caused by features based on improper logic. On the other side: the confusion caused by learning new features. Which side of the scale is greater? In the case of e-mail, apparently it’s more confusion to introduce something new (and more convenient) than it is to learn a new button that is more useful and less redundant.

If you observe the way tech companies handle UI dilemmas over the years, you will notice patterns in how their designers view this problem:

Apple & Facebook – Would rather initially confuse with new features and drastic changes between versions than continue with poor design.

Microsoft, Adobe & Google – Interfaces barely change, meaning upgrades are easier to handle, but poorly designed options will continue to plague the user experience.

Microsoft used this phrase in its Outlook app for iOS. It appears after you have cleared your inbox of all messages and congratulates you for your achievement.