Help me find a photo project

[YJD]

Thank you for those replies.
I have made myself a calendar and each month I have to shoot at a different focal lens and also focus on a specific color or style of photography.
Once I'll get home, I will post my calendar. For this month I'm shooting at 28mm (on my lens not the 35mm value) and I have to focus on dark or low light environment.
I think all I need is a goal to help me achieve better pictures!

[janosh]

If your goal really is to develop as a photographer, avoid the yawn stuff: avoid macro, avoid kids, avoid sunsets, avoid "graphics", avoid "abstractions".


Photograph tough stuff: your neighbors, especially if they're unattractive or dull-looking. If you don't know them, meet them. Or, do the yawn stuff and call it a day.

[Steve Beswick]

Originally Posted by janosh

If your goal really is to develop as a photographer, avoid the yawn stuff: avoid macro, avoid kids, avoid sunsets, avoid "graphics", avoid "abstractions".


Photograph tough stuff: your neighbors, especially if they're unattractive or dull-looking. If you don't know them, meet them. Or, do the yawn stuff and call it a day.

What is a "yawn" to you might be exciting to others.

[K McCall]

Your idea definitely sounds like a good one!

I do the 365 days of self-portraits - in fact I've done it for two entire years and now I'm 126 days into my third year.

My first year, my goal was to learn my camera and my equipment, because I started the project about one month after getting my K100D, which was my first DSLR. Somewhere in there, I decided to try to make every photo be better than the last one.

My second year, I decided to relax a bit; so long as I took one photo a week I was proud of, then I would consider the week a success.

This third year, I decided to add a "matching" shot for each day. For instance, I would take a photo of me wearing a scarf with a wide-angle lens then do a macro of the scarf fibers. Or perhaps I'd process the photo of myself to match a photo of a flower I took the same day. This has been MUCH more trying than the other projects, but by now I know that good photos will come - sometimes when I least expect them, so long as I'm prepared.

There are a few reasons I like this project:
a) It's made me a MUCH better portraitist. I'm now insanely cognizant of an unflattering angle or misplaced hair in a shot.
b) My eyes are constantly open to possibilities for tomorrow's portrait - and I see a lot more stuff along the way.
c) I have learned to deal with my creative blocks, which happen frequently and without warning. This has been probably the most difficult thing about the project. But so long as I take a shot - any shot - that day, then that means I didn't give up, and I can try harder the next day.
d) In a bid to keep it interesting, I've found myself using lenses I thought I would shun (the fisheye, the DA* 200, etc) and realized what kinds of rewards I can reap from those lenses.
e) I can now shoot with my left hand, with the camera upside-down, and with my pinky.

I know you said you specifically did not want to do this project, but I thought there might be something in there from my experience that you could take to your project. I wish you the best of luck. The hardest part BY FAR of any photo project is just sticking with it!

[janosh]

"What is a "yawn" to you might be exciting to others."

Sorry to frighten you :-)

If it's easy, which is the same as emphasizing tools/techniques and yawn subjects, YTD's photo project won't accomplish much.

It'll just be more of the same. Flickr is full of it. If you want to get BETTER, as YTD does, you have to risk failure and hardly anybody dealing with the usual trite subjects risks failure. The yawns are easy.

YTD said : " For this month I'm shooting at 28mm (on my lens not the 35mm value) and I have to focus on dark or low light environment.
I think all I need is a goal to help me achieve better pictures!"


He wants to do exactly what he said he wanted to do...make better pictures: BETTER is not related to "more of the same". It's a matter of developing one's own way of looking at the world, which means giving onself a difficult challenge, giving oneself the opportunity to fail. Since the technical part is easy, "skills" are less important than developing that way of seeing things: Develop your own style.


Working in dark environments teaches a lot...the technical part is easy with today's tech, it's the dark image itself that's difficult because you have to envision something, actually use your mind and eyes. More than just working in dark environments, making extremely dark images is the important opportunity...and they should be shown to other people, not just privately viewed: it's a challenge to interest people other than oneself. You might fail quite a bit before you're happy with your results. That's the beauty of it. Leave the bugs, birds, sunsets to happy snappers who put no demands on themselves.


Switching to 28mm (and sticking with it for a long time) is a GREAT idea, much better than fooling with zooms. 35mm is great too...as would be 50mm. Long lenses and zoom mostly serve to box photographers into trite subjects.

[mysticcowboy]

I was in a similar place last winter. My solution was to just go out and take at least 25 shots every day. Bracketed shots didn't count. That was 25 different subjects or angles. So many days I came back with a card full of junk. Some days it was hard to get my count, others something seemed to click. (no pun intended). However, I found that working on the self-imposed deadline got me taking photos and I literally shot my way out of my slump.

After a couple of month of this I found a theme that interested me. That came about the same time as I ran into the 365 project. I was too late to start at the first of the year but have been blogging a photo a day of my town and surrounding area since July. The deadline still pushes me. Some days I despair of finding anything worth photographing. Some days I'm amazed by the number of interesting subjects that seem to magically turn up.

Whatever tricks you use, just spending time taking photos should push you to the next thing.

michael mckee
My Port Townsend – A City in Photographs

[YJD]

Thank you for all the comments.
Shooting in the dark or low light isn't easy, but I got some good ones at sunset. I'll post them when this month will be over.

There is a book with 50 photography projects, don't know if it is any good, but looks nice.

Hopefully, one evening I'll be able to put up my calendar... right now I'm fixing my house every night .