International Photography Days: The Calendar Through 2031

Photography is mostly something you do alone. You walk alone, you choose alone, you wait alone for the light to do what you want. Even on a busy street you stand by yourself waiting for that one moment nobody else sees coming. And afterwards you sit alone behind your screen deciding what stays. It is a craft that does not share itself easily in the moment.

At the same time, no group comes together as easily as photographers do. The moment there is something worth photographing anywhere, the whole world lines up shoulder to shoulder on the same dyke. Ask a photographer to come along and the answer is almost always yes.

What the solar eclipse showed

On 12 August, half of the Netherlands stood outside. The sun was about 90 percent covered here, making it the biggest partial eclipse since 1999. Observatories threw their doors open, people drove to the dunes because the sun sat low over the northwestern horizon, and anyone who wanted to see the whole thing was in Northern Spain or Iceland.

I stood in my own garden. My family watched through eclipse glasses, while I fiddled with a box, a pinhole and a sheet of paper. A camera obscura, in other words, the simplest camera there is. No lens, no screen, just a small crescent of light slowly changing shape on a piece of paper. I probably watched it longer than I watched the sun itself.

And yet it was not something I did alone. While I stood there, Instagram filled up. The same sun, a hundred thousand times over, from every corner of Europe. Tripods lined up on dykes and dunes, complete strangers swapping filters, people explaining how on earth you focus on something you are not allowed to look at. Some with €10,000 worth of gear, someone else with a kitchen sieve that dropped sun-shaped crescents as shadows on the pavement.

That is what a shared date does. Nobody had to arrange anything. The calendar did the work.

Alone behind the camera, together as photographers

I think most photographers need that mix. The making is solitary, the craft is not. You need people who understand why you stand on a corner for half an hour. Who do not ask why you did not just straighten that photo. Who tell you honestly that a series is not finished yet.

That is exactly why Niels de Kemp and I talk with photographer friends every episode of 30 Minuten Sluitertijd, our Dutch-language podcast. Not celebrity interviews for the sake of celebrity, but conversations with people doing the same thing you are and running into the same things. Doubt, direction, money, sticking with it. The odd thing is you often learn more from that than from yet another explanation of settings.

It works the same way online. A group chat where someone drops in a photo at eight in the evening. A community that meets up in the city on Sunday. A photo contest you enter not to win, but to give yourself a deadline.

Why a date on your calendar helps

A photography day is ultimately nothing more than an appointment with yourself that happens to have been made by thousands of others too. And that is exactly why it works. You do head out, because the day is simply there. You do finish something, because others are showing something that day as well.

I am not romantic about it myself. Most of these days were dreamed up by someone with a website and too much time. But a handful have genuinely grown into something worthwhile, and an occasion remains an occasion. Below is the list for the next five years, including the days that fall on a different date each year.

The fixed days

These fall on the same date every year.

Not a photography day in the classic sense, but a day that matters for documentary and photojournalism. A good moment to share the work of photojournalists, or to write something about it. If you shoot on the street yourself, it is worth pausing to consider how much freedom that actually is.

Easy to turn your nose up at. Yet the self-portrait is as old as photography itself, and much older still if you count painting. Try making a self-portrait that is not a selfie. Tripod, available light, ten minutes. Standing in front of the camera also teaches you a fair amount about what it feels like to be photographed.

The day of the device. A good moment to dig that old camera out of the attic, or to spend a day working with a single fixed focal length. Constraint is still the fastest way to get better.

The big one. On 19 August 1839, the French government made the daguerreotype process public and effectively gave it to the world. That act of giving away might be the nicest part of the story. This is the day with the most reach, worldwide. If you pick just one, pick this.

The largest photo contest in the world. You photograph monuments and donate the pictures to Wikipedia. It costs you nothing, gives you a nice project, and your work ends up in places you never expected. It also forces you to take a proper look at your own surroundings.

The moving days

These shift with the calendar every year.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Always falls on the last Sunday of April. A camera with no lens, just a pinhole, exactly like that box in my garden. You can make one yourself from a shoebox. For anyone who feels photography has become too fast, this is the best correction there is. Exposure times of minutes, no screen to check, and only days later do you know if it worked.

World Cyanotype Day

Falls on the last Saturday of September. Making blueprints with sunlight. Analog, physical and surprisingly addictive. You watch your image literally appear in the sun.

Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo Walk

Usually falls on the first Saturday of October, but the organisation announces the exact date separately each year, so check worldwidephotowalk.com. People all over the world walk a route together that day and photograph as they go. For street photographers this is the most fun of the bunch, precisely because you head out with others instead of on your own.

What you can actually do with it

A photography day is only worth something once you do something with it. Three approaches that work:

1. Plan an assignment for yourself. Pick a theme in advance and stick to it. One day, one subject, no way out. The constraint is what makes the day.
2. Do not go alone. The days that stick are the ones you walked with others. Bring two people along and agree on where you will get coffee. That last part matters more than the first.
3. Show it. Not thirty photos, just one. The day gives you a reason to share without it feeling forced.

And here is the most important part: you do not need to wait for it. The best day to take photographs is still today, and the best way to keep it up is together. This calendar is only here for when today does not work out.