Sveinn Birkir has been collecting images from 1976 to make a visual anthology of the year he was born.

Freaking rad!

Wanna make your own Project 1976? Search Flickr or Google Image Search for your birth year and see what comes up.

Look for events that happened and things that came out that year (cars, products, albums, movies). Who was on the cover of Time or Rolling Stone? Who died or was born that year?

Sprinkle in some family photos and show off your time capsule! Start a photoblog, or print the photos and stick ‘em on the wall.

Better yet, do this for a pal (or your kid, if you’ve got one of those) and make it into a book for their birthday. Better even than cupcakes, amigo.

Project 1976
via Kottke

p.s. We really wish our name was Sveinn.

Does your mom want jewelry for Mother’s Day? Nah. Bath salts? Nope. A pet tarantula? Probably not.

What she really wants is time with you! (Also possibly lunch.)

Your mom sounds nice. So we’ve got 11 different ways to make her happy on Mother’s Day!

We’ve got ideas for photos to take, things to make, and things you can do together.

You’re a good kid.

11 Ways to Make Your Mom Really Really Happy This Mother’s Day

p.s. Mother’s Day is May 10th this year. Get crackin’!

Photo credit: kjsydney

Got big plans for Earth Day?

Gonna build a windmill out of recycled soda cans? Or modify your car to run on potato peelings and hope?

Yeah, sure you are. How about something that’s simple enough to actually DO?

Something like taking a day-in-the-life portrait of the whole entire planet!

It’s easy, just take some photos of the world around you on Wednesday April 22nd. Send your best snap to the good folks at Earth Mosaic, and they’ll use it to create a giant photo mosaic of the Earth!

Then you can totally brag to your greener-than-thou friends about how you participated in a global art project on Earth Day and all they did was buy organic yams. Wusses.

Join The Earth Mosaic Project!

p.s. Been meaning to get your hands on a super fantastic Photojojo Gorillapod? Our friends at MCP Actions might be able to help you.

Photojojo science update: we have learned of a way to tear holes in the space-time continuum and stare back into the mists of time.*

Being the existential daredevils that we are, we’re risking reality as we know it to share this discovery with all of you. Proceed with caution.

Step 1:
Find a very old photo of a street or landmark near where you live. (Try your local historical society or check the public library — many of them keep collections of historic photos).

Step 2:
Go to the exact place where the photo was taken.

Step 3:
Hold up the picture and match the view of bygone days to the ultra-futuristic scene in front of you.

Be warned: though you may peer into the window in the space-time continuum, do not fall through. The other side of the window is a nightmarish half-life of Morlocks, flux capacitors and Michael J. Fox.

Using Old Photos as a DIY Time Machine

*Yeah, we know that the last four times we tore holes in the space-time continuum we ended up destroying the known universe. We swear that won’t happen again this time. Probably.

p.s. Hey everybody, sorry about the broken link in Monday’s newsletter. Boy, are our faces red.

Photo credit: jasonepowell

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2

Introducing the Wrap-Around-the-Corner Frame, a modern geometrical marvel of rectangularity! You thought our magnetic photo rope was radical — well, the newest addition to our store is even more mind bending (and wall bending)!

The Wrap-Around-the-Corner frame is an all-in-one stack o’ frames that’s guaranteed to hug corners better than a Ferrari Enzo.

This puppy is truly a turning point in frame design, displaying up to 12 photos at a time whilst clinging to the corners of your wall.

Espresso stained wood keeps it classy, and ordinary frame brackets make it easy for the frame to grab your walls.

The All-New Wrap-Around-the-Corner Frame!

p.s. Wanna save some sweet sweet dollaroos? Get in our extra-special week-long promotion for the Wrap-Around-the-Corner frame! Find out more here.

Attention adults:

This week’s Photojojo is for kids. If you know any kids, send it their way.

If you don’t know any kids, you’re out of luck for today. Or you can pretend to be 8 years old and see if that works for you. Either way, no grownups allowed.

Attention kids:

This newsletter is just for you. If you catch any grownups reading it, we give you permission to make them sit in the corner until they’ve learned their lesson.

Just because you’re shorter than adults doesn’t mean you can’t be just as good a photographer as them. In fact, being kid-sized lets you get shots they never could.

Prepare to discover your secret photographic superpowers, small one.

Super-Secret Photo Projects Just For Kids

Photo credit: JPhilipson

We love hearing from our adoring faithful Photojojo fans. And what we’ve heard lately is that you kids love the photo projects, but you really love the short photo projects.

Good news, everyone! This project will only take you one day.

Here’s the plan:

1. Find another photographer.
2. Take a portrait of that person with whatever matters most to them, be it their family, their cat, or their first-edition copy of Molecular Quantum Mechanics.
3. Give them a copy of their portrait, on one condition:
   they have to do the same for another photographer.

There you go: one day of shooting, and you’ve set the wheels in motion for an ongoing (possibly never-ending) project. Get everyone to post their photos online, and see how long you can keep the project rolling.

We’ve started a special forum thread just for all of you, so let’s see what you’ve got!

Pay It Forward Portrait Project

p.s. Thanks to Joel Weibner for tipping us off about John Michael Cooper’s original Pay It Forward project!

Once a year, a small army of photojournalism majors swarms over Athens County, Ohio, taking photos of everyday life from sunup to sundown.

It’s called the Dawn to Dusk project.

Documenting a whole day in a county sounds like a big, complicated undertaking. But break it down, and you’ve got a project doable for just about anyone.

In fact, you can do this with only as many people as you can count on your hand (even if you don’t have extranumery digits).

Read on for our tips on how to do your own Dawn to Dusk project: where to shoot, who to involve, and how to show off all your hard work.

Capturing Life from Dawn to Dusk

Photo credits: Sam Saccone, Alex Snyder, and Rachel O’Hara.

If you happen to live in the United States, all you’ve heard about lately is the elections. (Chances are you’ve heard a lot about it even if you don’t live here.)

But when you get right down to it, the actual act of voting is so mundane, so taken-for granted, that more than a third of Americans didn’t even bother in 2004.

That’s why we like the New York Times’ Polling Place Photo Project. It elevates the ordinary, bland places where history is made.

Photographing your polling place is a great challenge: it makes you rethink the importance of what goes on there.

We challenge you to cast that church basement or high-school auditorium in heroic light, to raise the sleepy, coffee-deprived people lining up before work onto their proper civic pedestal.

And why stop there? Why not get out and document the process leading up to the election? Photograph the rallies, the clever posters, your friends arguing politics. If there was ever a year for political photography, this is it.

The Polling Place Photo Project

If you’re not in the United States, we’re dying to see how politics work in your country. What do the campaign posters look like? Do you have voter registration cards? Where do you vote? Post your pictures on the Photojojo Forum and tell us all about it!

Submit Photos of Your Country’s Political Process

p.s. New to the neighborhood? Don’t know where your polling place is? Google can tell you where to go.

p.p.s. Don’t forget to enter our Macro-zoom-ography Contest before it ends this Sunday, 10/26! The Nature Photography Contest is still going strong, too: enter here!

p.p.p.s. Some cities/counties/states allow photography in the polling place and some don’t. If yours doesn’t, please respect the rules, and be nice to your polling officer!

It’s no secret we love Project 365. We’re a curious bunch, and often it’s the best way to get to know someone (including yourself).

What happens when the logic’s applied to your town? Your neighbors?

Larry Strung knows. He’s taken Project 365 to the streets of his humble hamlet, Hamilton, Ontario. And we love his town.

Each day he photographs (and posts online) a different citizen. It’s like finally getting to meet all your neighbors, one day and one neighbor at a time. The biker who rides at 6 am, the doctor, the farmer, the mayor. Talk about a complete picture of a place.

Take a cue from Strung and hit the pavement while it’s still warm enough to do so. Meet your neighbors from behind your lens.

Larry Strung’s Hamilton365

p.s. Live in New York City or San Francisco? Come out to our awesomely fun photo meetup Wednesday night (organized with our pals at JPG Magazine and Lomography). Read more…