Taking a recent photography course taught me that having a target in photography and art is important. I haven’t been out with my camera as much as I would like recently as I have been starting a new job but now I’m getting back into it and have decided that having projects is a good way of focusing the time that I have available to do some useful photography.
Firstly, I have been trying to make a list of photographs that I want to take at some point in the future, or in different lighting or seasons etc. So that when the right time comes along I already have some ideas.
Secondly, I have been trying to keep notes in an ideas book about what I think about images that I see, what I like and what I think works well. This is the help widen the type of photography I take. This notebook can also be used to record ideas for photographs and I have found it really useful.
Thirdly, while I was on the course I was set a theme to take photographs around, the word I had was “Environment”, and I have decided that this is something I want to continue. It helps challenge your creativity.
Challenge photography is something that I have also seen suggested in articles in Practical Photography, you can pick words out to shoot around like was suggested to me, or you can flip a coin on a map and only then go and shoot in one area. You could also put types of subjects in one cup, lenses in another and places in another and pick out combinations. The idea they were getting at was to challenge yourself not to take simple things and see what you could create.
They even mentioned a photographer who only took a single photograph each day for three months and build it up into a project. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to do that!
I think I’m going to try and set myself weekly challenges to get back into my photography and see what I come up with. The first is to get more film and then take more long exposure night time photography. I’m looking forward to having more new work to look at!
I might even go as far as entering some photography competitions to get my work shown more, if anyone knows of any good ones do feel free to comment.
