Projects: The secret to inspired photography

As I'm recording this towards the end of 2024, I've been looking back at what went well, and what didn't. And identifying the lessons I've learned this year that I can take with me into 2025 (and make a lot of new mistakes!).

Something that I believe can be very helpful is to take part in a photography project. In this podcast, I'll take you through a few project ideas, and outline why I think they can be very valuable to improving your photography.

Here's the link to my 14 day challenge (discussed in the podcast).

I hope you enjoy it...

It's time for another podcast...

Chapters

• 0:00 Photography Projects for Growth
• 6:29 365-Day Photography Projects
• 16:55 Photography Projects

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Well, hello again and welcome to this podcast. Now I'm recording this towards the end of 2024, and that, to some extent, has set the subject of this particular podcast, because what I'd like to do at the end of the year. I think, like most people, I kind of take my foot off the gas a little bit, just take a few days out at least, just have a bit of a rest, and it's a great time to look back on the 12 months that have just gone by and look at what I've learned from those 12 months. So you, if you're like me, I'm sure you've made lots of mistakes this year, but I think the key thing about making mistakes is that we, we all do that. If you do anything, you're going to make mistakes, but the important thing is to learn from them, and then in the new year, you can make a whole lot of new mistakes that you can learn from in turn. But, joking aside, I think it is good to just look back on really what you've achieved in the year. Um, it's very easy to focus on the negative things, but I'm sure for pretty much all of us, even if we've had a rough year, there'll be some positive things that have come out of it and, from a photography perspective, I've certainly learned a few things.

Speaker 1: 1:25

So one of the things I did this year was to go to Atosha for the first time in northern Namibia and take photographs there, and, to be honest, that was very unexpected what I found there. I got really lucky with the animals that I saw. Mostly I got shots that I'm really pleased with, but there are a few that, looking at them, they're not quite what I wanted, so I kind of messed up on those. So there's some learning in that and to me, this is one of the big things about photography. It's something where you're constantly learning and even with things that you can feel pretty confident about, we still make mistakes, we still get things wrong, we still get a bit slack on certain areas. So it's good to just look at what we can do, what we've learned from the year in this case, and then do different things. So the reason that I want to talk about projects in this podcast is that I kind of got thinking when I was looking at. Well, it's partly because I was thinking about what had gone on this year, and also I am doing a project of my own which I'm not going to talk about just yet, but it is something that I'll of my own, which I'm not going to talk about just yet, but it is something that I'll talk about in due course but I think they're really important and there's a few reasons for that.

Speaker 1: 2:39

I think the main one is that this whole podcast is about wildlife and adventure photography. So, really, the key things about that however you define an adventure, but really the the thing to always have with you or to know is that when you go off to do that kind of photography, you need to know your camera, that if you're in a wildlife situation and, let's say, an animal is chasing down prey and you want to photograph it, that is not the time to start trying to remember where you got a certain setting, from which menu you've got to go to all of this kind of stuff. This is just automatic. So if you are planning a trip, well, anytime really, but be it wildlife, adventure of some sort motorsports, good one, any kind of sport, any kind of photography, really the key thing is that you you need to know your tools. You need to know your camera and the equipment that you have, even things like portrait, which are perhaps a slower paced style of photography for most people anyway, you still need to be able to focus on the person that you're photographing, because that's where you get the really good results, by your ability to connect with another person, get them to be relaxed, get them to follow direction. And again, the camera stuff operator or flash, whatever you've got, whatever your setup is that needs to be secondary. You don't want to be thinking about what you have to do next especially, and what I mean by that is it's not like you're going to just pause the shoot while you look something up in your user manual, because that is not going to inspire your subject with a lot of confidence and it's going to break all of the good work you've done to that point in connecting with them.

Speaker 1: 4:28

So I hope I'm preaching to the converted a little bit here. So I'm going to talk about projects, and what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to explain and give you examples of different projects, but one of the projects that I'll support you on and you can do straight away if you jump on to my website and that's under the training tab but there's a 14-day photography project. It's a 14-day challenge, and what happens with that one, the way that works is that you take one photograph or a series of photographs every day, but there's a particular topic or a particular type of photography that I ask you to do for that day. So one of those would be rule of thirds, just to give you an example, and it means that you are being asked to photograph. Probably a lot of it you would do anyway, but what I find is that usually with most people, there's at least one challenge, one daily challenge, which isn't what they would normally shoot.

Speaker 1: 5:30

So it's about getting you to step out of your comfort zone, to make that commitment to just follow the challenge and go through, get the best results you can. You're welcome to share those on the Facebook group and if you want to have critiques, just ask for critiques, and that can all be done. But it's about stretching you a little bit as a photographer each time, and I think if you're not doing that, you're probably not growing very much as a photographer. So the key to growth is just keep pushing the boundaries of where you're comfortable, the kind of photography that you're comfortable with. And again, in recent podcasts I've spoken about macro photography, I've spoken about urban photography or street photography, and these may be things that you're very familiar with, or they might be things you've never tried before. These may be things that you're very familiar with, and all them might be things you've never tried before. So the reason for doing a project is to make sure that you are really familiar with your equipment and familiar to the point where you can stretch and go beyond what you normally know without having to think about it too much.

Speaker 1: 6:30

So what are some project examples? Well, other examples are more time-based. So you might do a 365-day project, which is basically taking one photograph a day and then you can put those together either in an album or as a video or whatever you want to do at the end of the year, and that can be pretty good. Actually, where you're doing that kind of photography, now, this might be your story of that year. So if you just take a photograph whenever you're out doing what you would normally do on that day, that's one way of approaching it. Or you might want to shoot something different every day or challenge yourself maybe macro one day, maybe something kind of more normal the following day, maybe telephoto the day after. You could incorporate other challenges.

Speaker 1: 7:22

I'll talk about some more in a moment, but the key thing is to take one photograph every day, or at least one, and use one of those in a final collection of the year, the 365-day project. Now, you can also extend that beyond one year and um. An example that I'll often cite is um. There's one particular photographer I can't remember his name, to be honest, but he, he, um started taking photographs of his daughter right from when she was born, pretty much, and he put together a video and he tried to pose her in more or less the same pose every year, but it was one photograph a year. So you ended up with this sequence of photographs that took her from zero to about 20. I think it was.

Speaker 1: 8:12

So if you're going to do that, obviously that takes a bit of commitment and you probably need to put some rules around that. So it might be on her birthday, for example, as the guide, or you might choose to take two or three pictures a year. However you want to do it, and really there are no hard and fast rules on this. I think the thing is to use suggestions as a guide and then just modify those suggestions so that you start shooting something that you feel the result will be really exciting to watch, and that's the key thing. If you're excited about the project, then you're much more likely to see it through and much more likely to get good results. And that, again, is an important part of it, because this is ultimately to help you with your photography, help you to develop your style, help you to develop your skills as a photographer. So I think really it's important that you are excited at the thought of what you're creating as you create it.

Speaker 1: 9:07

So the 365 project is one. The photograph one person every year is another one, but if you're impatient like me, that might be more of a challenge. I'll probably run that as a secondary project. And on the time-based thing, obviously you can vary that however you like. So, for example, you could shoot from the same spot using the same lens at the same zoom if it's a zoom lens and that might be a tree, it might be a scene, but you might choose to shoot that every week for a year or maybe a period of years, but what you're seeing then is the change in seasons, how that particular scene changes, or it might be once a month. So hopefully you're getting the idea. You can really choose how you do this and set the timings up to suit you, because you might not be able to do it every day or every week, but having a project like that is, I think, is really great to look back on and it's certainly fun to do. So you've got your time-based projects. Basically that's the first one. So, as I said, that can be daily, yearly, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you weekly, monthly, whatever works for you.

Speaker 1: 10:27

Another approach to this is to have a project where you only use one lens, and what I found is the best kind of lenses for doing this are things like using a standard lens or certainly using a fixed focal length, so a prime lens, where you don't have the option to zoom. You're now limited to just one particular way of viewing that particular scene. The advantage of a standard lens is that that's generally a normal view, so it's what you would see with your eye, and that, if you're like me, I love using zoom lenses because I love to get views that are different to what you would normally see with your eyes. So that's actually a good challenge for me to go back to just using a standard lens. So I've now got the normal eye view. So how can I create photographs that are interesting for people to look at.

Speaker 1: 11:18

So, again, one of the challenges on this is to take away the supports that you might normally have. So for me, it's usually a zoom lens. Take that away. And now the challenge is to start taking interest in photographs, but not in the way you would normally do it. So, again, this is just stretching you as a photographer. It's one way. It's getting the best out of the equipment you have, but it's also getting you to really think about what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Think about plan B. If plan A is to use a zoom lens, then what's plan B? With the standard lens? How are you going to create interesting photographs? Use things like composition to create that interest, to create a photograph that has leading lines in it, that does take the viewer on a journey. But the way that you're telling the story of your subject may well be very different to how you would normally tell that story. So that's another thing to use one particular, one specific lens and make sure that everything on that project is shot with that one lens. You could try other things like flash photography that that might be another way to do it. So, again, look at the equipment that you have available. You don't have to obviously go with the suggestions I'm making, and if you actually google photography projects, there are lots of them and much more than I'll cover in this podcast. But again, the idea is to pick a project that will stretch you and get you to think differently when you're composing a shot, when you're putting that shot together.

Speaker 1: 12:58

The third idea is to have a challenge that relates to a particular subject. Now, when I was doing photo walks with Shane and Colin we're observers in Sydney sometimes I'd run the photo walk myself, but if not, it was normally Colin and I, and often, before the walk kicked off, we would have a chat about what the challenge would be for that particular evening. So the photo walks always had a challenge related to them and the idea of that was to get people thinking about what they were shooting, get them to really look at what was around. And again, this to me is one of the key aspects of being a good photographer it's to really observe, it's to really take a good look at what's around, and this is where photographing your local environment can be really good, because it makes you really start looking at what's around, not just glancing or walking past things, but just stopping and looking, maybe, maybe telling the story.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Maybe you research by looking at the history, for example, of where you live. If you live in a place and frankly, most places have history, even if they're relatively new There'll be some story to tell. But if you're lucky and I'm very lucky I live near, excuse me, a French Bastide town that goes back to the 12th and 13th century. There's a huge amount of history here, and so it would be very easy for me to do a challenge about the history of this particular town, because there are so many threads to it, and then the result of that project could be to publish a collection or a photo book or something like that. That is the narrative, that goes with the photographs, that goes with the image, and in doing that, we can share the story of this particular place with, maybe, people who live here or visit here, whatever it might be. So these are just ideas. Hopefully they're giving you ideas.

Speaker 1: 15:00

But, going back to the subjects, the kind of things you can choose might be a color. So, for example, you might make the theme the color red and you could put additional constraints on that project. So it might be the color red in your local town, as I've just been talking about that, or it could be relating to people, for example, or clothing, or anything you know. You think about it. Just use your imagination and think about areas where you might see the color red. It might be normal or it might not be, but where do you find the color red? So traffic lights are obviously one. If you're going around the local area, it might be in a flag. So I'm in France. We have the blue, white and red flag here, so red would obviously feature their cards Not so many these days, but you get red cards. So that could be your challenge. Where can you see the color red or any color? So that's one option.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Another challenge that we used to use on the photo walks, and we had a whole list of these that we would kind of put together and then pick one for that particular evening. But it could be parallel lines might be one. So if you have buildings around, then generally you're likely to find a lot of parallel lines. But what about in nature? Where do you find parallel lines there? Or another possible subject might be shapes, so it could be squares, circles, triangles, anything like that. Or you might look for shapes within shapes, so triangles or circles within squares, for example. So where, when you're walking around, do you like to find those? So I've just spoken about traffic lights. That's one possibility, because usually there are multiple shapes there, but these are the kind of things to think about Now.

Speaker 1: 16:55

Another option on your subject, on this particular challenge, given that this is a wildlife and adventure podcast, is to choose certain animals, so it could be birds, for example. So your theme might be to shoot birds over a period of two or three months, for example, or it might be to shoot, photograph different birds over the course of a year and make a note of the kind of birds that you're seeing as the year progresses. So this could be looking at species that are around at certain times of the year. So I'm recording this in the winter and I have robin redbreast around. They come into my garden. If I put food out for them, they definitely go for that. In fact, some of them will come back and actually ask for more, but I don't see them every year. Hoopoo's another bird that I see, and I like those because I've seen them around Africa, and we also get them in southern France, where I live, and they are only a visitor for a certain season, and then of course, you've got other birds that are there all year round.

Speaker 1: 18:07

So, again, this is all telling a story. It's telling the story of the change in visitors, the wildlife that you're going to see in a particular area as the year goes on, and going to larger animals. When I was in Sydney, as I've spoken about before, we would get humpback whales normally from somewhere around the middle of May to somewhere around the middle of November and I'd be out in the whale watching boat as often as possible to photograph them. But if I went to photograph whales this time of year to in December, I'm likely to be pretty disappointed. So all of these things where these challenges tie together is they tell a story. And so with the 365 day, it might be personal, it might be your story for that year. If you're shooting the same view maybe every week for a year, then you've got the story of how that landscape changes, and it may be nature, it could be to do with what people do. For example, I live in a winemaking area, so there are periods where the vines are trimmed, they're left alone, the various things they do with the v vines as they grow, but you get that period of a lot of growth, uh, when the vines start to grow, and then you've got harvest going on. So all of these tell the story. So have a think about it. Hopefully, as I've said, this has given you some ideas for the kind of story that you can tell and the reason that I've come to story again, which is not a new one if you've listened to me before.

Speaker 1: 19:48

But I believe the the best way to approach photography is to think of yourself as a visual storyteller and, for the reasons that I have spoken about before, that we are hardwired for stories. We love stories. We can't get enough of stories. So this is why TV shows, comic books, movies, all of those things are extremely popular today. But if you go before those sort of times, we would you know. You can imagine sitting around a campfire and just telling stories and, of course, people will embellish them, make them more exciting, whatever it might be. But we love stories and because that's how we like to get a lot of our information, our history, whatever else it might be.

Speaker 1: 20:36

If you approach photography that way, it does a couple of things. One is you're likely to be shooting stuff, whether it's one photograph or it might be three photographs I mean. Another challenge, just when I think about it, is to shoot the same scene or the same subject three ways. So, obviously in portrait and then landscape two ways of doing it. But what's the third? I'm not going to tell you, but what it does is thinking about as a story. You can put a sequence of photographs together and maybe they visually tell the story, or maybe there are words to go along with them. It depends upon what that story is. But this is just ways of improving your skills as a photographer.

Speaker 1: 21:23

And here we're going beyond the technical, so beyond the operation of the camera itself, which is important, as I've stressed already that you really need to know how to use your camera. But the good photographs and the secret of good photographs is to go beyond the camera itself, because you have to have that imagination, that vision of what the final image is going to be like, or at least have some concept of it, because that is defining what you are presenting to the person who you might never meet, but they're looking at your work and that photograph might mean something to them. Meet, but they're looking at your work and that photograph might mean something to them. So this is where, for me, photography switches from being something that we do as a personal, private thing. It becomes art. It's public domain, those photographs that we choose to share and therefore, if you take on a project, what's the theme? What theme? What are you telling that person who's looking at your work? So that's my thought, really, or the thoughts for this particular podcast.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Like I say, there's help on my website. If you do the photography course I'm pretty sure I spoke about um projects in there, I think on my patreon as well, because I put I remember put together a list of different projects. I can't quite remember now where I put it, uh, but if you, if you go on there and you can't find it, just drop me a line and, um, I'll happily, uh, share some ideas with you. Equally, you can google photography projects. I'm sure that will come up with a lot of useful things for you.

Speaker 1: 23:07

But this, although they can feel like a kind of trivial thing to do, I think they are important for the reasons that I stated earlier. Simply, that it gets you using your camera every day or every week and you maintain that familiarity with it. So when you are, let's say, if you've got some great trip planned this year, this coming year, when you do pick up your camera to go off on your trip, you're picking up an old friend, you know how to use it, you know how to get the best from it, and that, I think, is where this becomes really important, and the bonus is that you might produce some really exciting work in the process, so let's not rule that out. Okay. So thank you for joining me on this podcast. Thank you for supporting the podcast. If you want to donate to the podcast or subscribe, that would be very appreciated as well. It allows me to keep on doing what I'm doing and I hope you enjoy your project. So bye for now.