MAYER, Minn. — As a suburbanite who moved to a farm, Michael Deering never runs out of things to admire.
Look one way, and he sees an old hog barn painted in classic red. Look another, and a dragonfly hovers in the pasture. Look up, and a retired windmill still towers over the 1912 farmstead.
“To me, signifies a beacon for your farm,” Michael says.
But wherever Michael's eyes take him, one thing is certain.
“Camera's always in the pocket,” Michael says.
And why?
“Because you never know,” he responds with a smile.
Which brings us to Michael’s farmhouse basement.
“This is the cache of 27 years of photos,” Michael says, as he begins to pull stack after stack of photos from a sturdy metal cellar safe.
The stacks pile up, filling his workbench. Each contains 365 photos.
“Besides my own family and friends, this is the most important thing I have in my life,” Michael says.
His quest started in 1996.
“There it is,” Michael says, pointing to a photo. “The very first picture of the day.”
Three smiling faces are captured in time.
“This is at the Lexington in St. Paul,” Michael says. “I celebrated my 30th birthday with my mother and father.”
Every day since, Michael has taken a single photo to represent that day in his life.
He points to another picture. Michael is lying down, unshaven. Except for a small opening to reveal his face, he is covered by a blanket.
“I think my girlfriend broke up with me or something,” he says. “I can see it in the eyes, just sad.”
Michael’s daily photos represent the range of life’s emotions.
“July 29th, 2004, that’s my firstborn son,” Michael says, holding up a delivery room photo of his son Kray.
He pulls out another photo of the birth of his second son, Leo.
Other photos are equally significant.
The day he proposed to his wife Cathy, and the day they married.
“My entire family gathered around to put my father in the ground,” Michael says, holding up a graveside photo of his father’s flag-draped coffin.
But tucked between the significant, is the stuff of ordinary days.
“This is the guy at the Byerly’s in Wayzata that I get my sushi from,” Michael says, holding up a picture.
For all 27 years of his pic-a-day pursuit, Michael has snapped each of his photos with a point-and-shoot Minolta film camera.
“It started with film,” Michael says. “When digital came into effect, I was like ‘Why would I stop now?’”
Above his bench, tucked between rafters, stands a row of cameras that gave their lives for Michael’s obsession. All wear tape labels affixed by Michael describing their ailments, from broken winding mechanisms to lenses that won’t close.
Michael estimates he’s worn out “at least 15 or 20” cameras.
Before meeting their demises, those cameras snapped history.
“Prince’s passing,” Michael says, holding up a photo from April 21, 2016. "Very first bouquet that was put on the fence outside Paisley Park on that fateful day."
Michael says he happened to be driving by Prince’s home and studio, saw a single police car, and turned back to take a second look.
He was also in his car in mid-March of 2020.
“That’s the parking lot of Ridgedale,” he says, holding up a picture of the empty shopping mall parking lot. “Day one of COVID lockdowns.”
A few weeks later, Michael arrived at his destination more deliberately.
“I just decided to go down there,” he says of his trip to 38th and Chicago, the Minneapolis intersection where George Floyd died – and Michael snapped a picture.
“I can’t breathe,” the sign in the photo reads.
Nearly every photo in the stacks on his workbench, was taken by Michael himself.
He holds up a notable exception. It was snapped, close up, in an operating room.
“That’s the heart,” Michael says.
Who took it?
“My surgeon,” Michael continues.
“Everybody has a different way of capturing their life or remembering their life,” Michael says. “This happens to be mine.”
All of which has brought Michael to a milestone.
Michael searched for an appropriate subject to mark 10,000 pics. He found one on his farm.
“I saw an old license plate, a Minnesota license plate sitting up on the wall, the ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes.’”
Michael took a picture of himself, his fingers covering all but “10,000” in the state motto.
“Just having the 10,000 there, to signify hitting my 10,000th photo,” Michael says.
Having reached that milestone, Michael has no intention of stopping now.
He suggests the only thing that could bring an end to his quest would be meeting the same fate as that row of deceased cameras.
“All I ask people, is make sure that last roll of film is developed,” Michael laughs. “Either that, or they bury it with me.”
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