How To Turn Pictures into a Project

I was only in Albany for a few hours last week. I headed out with a camera and took a bunch of pictures.

Occasionally I post the results of these little outings...you might remember when the tree service came or when I took a walk in Penn Yan. What you see of mine are usually simple "mini-sets" from one shooting session. I thought it might be useful to indicate the work process I'd use if I were doing any of these things in a more involved way, more seriously.

The basic process is reduced to essentials in a quote by Mark L. Power: "Shoot, think, shoot." That jibing between the one and the other is where the richness comes from.

The first step is to do some shooting and distill it into a handful of pictures you like, as I've done in these sets. They don't necessarily have to "go together," but can just be "the good ones." If the pictures suggest a direction, then the next step would be to go shoot a second time, perhaps with a picture or two in mind as a direction for the project—for instance if the two pictures here suggested "stone buildings" or "the vicinity of the capital building." I think the "idea" can be very vague at this point...it's more important to be open to whatever way you might want to take it.

Try your best to think of meaning, or feeling, and not just prettiness.

Don't forget that a set or portfolio of pictures can stand a lot of variety. As long as the theme, idea or raison d'etre is resilient enough to keep it from being just a bunch of pictures, variety provides dynamism. The fact that it's all your vision, style, and taste goes a fair way to keeping things coherent. Anyway editing for coherence and consistency is the last step, not something you want to start too early.

By the third or fourth photographing session—each time processing a handful of "good" or favorite pictures from the shooting—that's when you know if the project is maintaining any energy. If you're still energized and enthusiastic, that's enough of a sign that you should keep going. On the other hand, I get bored easily, and I suppose discouraged easily too, so I have to be careful—I don't want to give up on things too soon. It's important to know yourself; seldom is "energy" just limitless unbridled enthusiasm. A little judgment is called for too.

If the project has sufficient energy, then you're starting to accrue a stack of pictures. I say "stack," implying a physical form, as if they were prints, and that's intentional—always, always, it's better to look when you're thinking, when you're editing or evaluating. Don't work just with your mind—be sure you're working with your eyes too.

As the stack of pictures gets bigger, what I always find is that some of the earlier selects begin to fall away. For instance, of my "out for a walk" four, I only like the middle two now. So as you go along, you're both adding to the set and also culling it down. Let it evolve.

All of your visits to a place or outings for a project are valuable. Early on, you can see new things with fresh eyes, and the attentiveness that novelty provides is valuable. Later on you might be getting bored with the obvious shots and start to look for something different. That can help save your project from superficiality (a problem sometimes with photojournalism—the photographer "parachutes in," gathers some of the obvious pictures, then departs, having never really gotten to know anything deeply or specifically).

So when do you quit? At every stage of the process you have to balance thinking, or thoughtfulness, with openness. Even if you have the time and resources to keep adding to a project, every project has legs of its own...you'll know when you've got enough, when the set is a set and doesn't need any more. The longer and harder you work, though, the better the set usually gets, just because better pictures start crowding out less distinguished ones.

Photographers have definitely pursued projects for whole careers or lifetimes, and sometimes someone in a unique and uniquely rich situation can create a complete set of pictures in a week or even less. Stay attuned—it takes subtlety and good judgment to know when a project is complete. I should mention that a common mistake of amateur enthusiasts is to keep one idea going for way too long. They have access, and have learned how to get the goods, and it's easier to keep going than it is to start putting things in final form and moving on. You don't want to quit too soon (especially because of laziness, which is my flaw), but you don't want to drag things out either.

If I were to go ahead with the Albany pictures as a set, I'd plan three or four more trips to Albany to photograph, picking auspicious times of year. I might try to hire a local guide to squire me around. This is common practice among photojournalists working in foreign locations, often for security or translation purposes or both, but works just as well in places in your own country that you don't know well yourself. I'm not really much of a "city architecture" photographer myself—I really yearn to photograph people, but usually lack access (or the cojones to be bold with strangers). So I don't know that I'd devote a lot of time to making a whole project out of Albany. But that's how I'd go about it if I were doing it.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Nigel: "I did professional theatrical photography some years ago. Then it was easy to make good photographs as I knew what photographs I had to take and how they had to look. When I stopped and went back to doing it for my own pleasure my photography lost direction badly. I would go somewhere and snap what I found without direction or purpose and what I got was photographs without purpose or direction.

"My solution was to decide on a subject and then create a project and shoot to my imaginary brief.I often also have several projects running at the same time. This makes me research my subject and I often know what I am going to shoot before I arrive at a place. The research also throws up new places to visit.

"The conclusion of a project for me is when I have enough material to do a Blurb or ePub book for myself. Whilst doing the book I often see that I am missing something so out I go to fill in the missing links. Having the production of a book in mind, means that I try to shoot the pictures I will need; the establishing shots down to the detail shots.

"My projects are quite varied, from just documenting a family holiday,a small project documenting the abstract patterns in the mud around some mud volcanoes we have nearby, two structures by Calatrava in my town, or my latest one which documents the sites of WWII war atrocities against civilians in the Apennine mountains which was sparked by coming across a little monument in an inaccessibile part of these mountains whilst doing another project on rustic Apennine architecture."

David Cope: "Timely. I'm starting to edit what is in effect an 'accidental' project. I've been shooting two (sometimes three) times daily for over a year during the dog walk.

"Recently I was thinking about what I should do to start a project when it struck me that I'd been doing one without even realising it! My daily dose of photography has built up into quite an archive. I'm not a spray and pray type so the workload is manageable and I've been doing first cut selects as I go anyway.

"It's going to be challenging for me (which is part of the fun) as it's an eclectic mix of images—found still life, landscape, reportage, abstract, nature close up, weather, farming etc. Mostly shot with B&W in mind but some work better in colour and I've no idea how to handle this as a series yet!"

Kefyn Moss: "Whenever I travel now, I always end up doing projects. The individual 'hero' image has much less appeal now. I'm looking for the 'essence' of the place I'm visiting but I don't go looking for it too actively but rather let it come to me—which can take a few days to a week or more for me to recognise. I have in the last few years done book projects locally which I set for a year (but which I felt completed by eight months) and others that lasted the length of a trip (six weeks) or more recently when everything was firing perfectly less than three weeks. Not being able to easily return to the location makes it more critical to speed up and streamline the process you describe Mike, but I've found that it just happens naturally now and really focuses my creativity. It's very satisfying."

Ed Grossman: "Being mostly a project photographer, it's nice to see this topic featured. What astonishes me is how much I've learned about myself through my portfolios. Being able to articulate how I'm connected to my portfolios not only tells me what they're about but what I'm about. My stronger self-awareness has bettered my life.

"One piece of advice I'd offer is the importance of making the work for an audience of one (yourself). This can't help but strengthen the art and your bond to it. Should you decide to share the work with an audience, your passion will radiate from it. I'm convinced that people can 'see' that personal connection in art and bond with the artist when it's present. In my opinion, doing what you love is a win-win situation."

Comments

[Bruce Bordner]

I'm too lazy for "projects", but I have been revisiting Sandy Hook, NJ (part of Gateway National Park) for years. I can see it evolve: the old gun emplacements age slowly but the beach has waves that can take years to go in and out. Then there are storms that reform areas overnight...

One of the fun things is that I have shot the same chunks of old Christmas trees (buried to stabilize the beach) in many different ways each time. There is a blob of concrete that seems to rise and sink in the water on the same beach... over years.

And there are the painted bunkers slowly falling apart - I need to get back there. I haven't shot there for way too long - working on the house instead. But, no rush... I only have to beat rust.

Sometimes a project sneaks up on you. You just have to recognize the opportunity and work really hard to use it... oh, crap.

[Anthony Shaughnessy]

If you're a landscape shooter and you go out all the time to shoot landscapes, is that a project?
Anthony

[Well, I'd say no, but you're the artist, you decide. That's the beauty of it. --Mike]

[D]

Really enjoyed this piece! I think much of it applies to other creative work, too (i.e. writing).

[Barry Reid]

One other aspect of shooting a project, not touched on in your peice, that can be important is the sequencing or flow of the pictures. This is hard to master and I only really became aware of it the first time a gallerist the helped me hang a set of images. Her adjustment of my intended hang massively improved my exhibition!

[Peter]

I basically only shoot projects -- it gives me a reason to shoot, though the discovery of the project may have resulted from a random shot. So I guess I don't "always" shoot projects, for instance those times between projects.

My most recent project is some nighttime street work in Brooklyn, with a flash. I was after a certain look that not all the pics I took had, in terms of movement and mood, but that's all part of the editing process. Here it is with some thoughts and very mixed feelings about street photography these days

http://petapixel.com/2016/08/15/love-street-photography-might-hate-even/

[Skeet]

Don't want to be that guy, but I think you mean jibe not jive.

[Bill Poole]

"I just had the feeling that I wanted to keep going back to the same ideas, knowing that they would be different, but still the same."

Harry Callahan, 1977

[hugh crawford]

I won't go down the "body of work" rabbit hole , even though it is so tempting.
I'll just mention that using Google street view and 3D Google earth is one way of pre-scouting interesting locations.

[Thomas Rink]

A possible complication which may occur if you let the project run for too long is that you (the photographer) change during the project. I believe that the reason for this is that each picture that you see or take will have an influence on your future ones - often only slightly, but sometimes powerful. Whatever the reason, this effect may possibly weaken the coherence of the finished work.

[Frank]

The older I get, the more I like color, and I do find b&w becoming just irritating and faux artistique. With the tech of today, there is no need for b&w no more, a soso color photo gets easily more interesting if you change it in b&w with lots of contrast. A good color photo is much more difficult to make, b&w is just the easy way. And also, I'm getting old and grumpy.....

[I feel the opposite, although I can enjoy color when it's well done. The old knocks against color, that it's arbitrary, decorative, and literal, still hold true for me. I could look at B&W photographs all day (provided the technique is competent or better) but I tire of color pictures after a while. When I see a search page of images my eye will zero right in on the B&W shots every time and those are the ones I want to see bigger. A matter of personal taste, except that the standard has definitely shifted--virtually all serious photography used to be B&W and now photography is overwhelmingly color. I do agree that photographers starting now or doing serious work now should probably engage with color and leave B&W alone. --Mike]

[Bill Tyler]

Mike, you write: "...it's arbitrary, decorative, and literal." Those aren't necessarily your positions, you're summarizing once prevalent thought. But this raises several questions. First, is color any more arbitrary than gray levels? It's certainly more varied, but more arbitrary? Is color photography necessarily decorative? What's evil about "decorative" anyhow? Is it impossible for a good photograph to also be interesting and enjoyable to look at? And the same questions apply to "literal." If there's validity at all in the anti-color position, it's an objection to the production of bad color photographs, and it's certainly possible to make bad photographs in color. I've done it a lot. But it's also possible to make bad photographs in black and white. I've made my share of those, too. So what?

[Not really our topic here today. We can certainly discuss this, but I'd much rather do it when I'm not on vacation and have more time to write and deal with comments. --Mike]

[John Krumm]

I've slowly become better at organizing what I shoot, which in turn helps me think in terms of ongoing "projects." To use your term, these are essentially digital stacks that I keep sorting through and occasionally re-stacking. I keep the stacks online, and yes, I should probably duplicate it on my computer in some way better than the original import folders, but I haven't yet. It would certainly help with making books or some other end product.

Here's an example...

http://juneauphotographs.com/Scenes-From-Duluth

[Edd Fuller]

In some cases, I have "discovered" a project while looking through old files where I find a trend or interest that I did not recognize when I made the shots. I may not use any of the old photos, but it gives me an insight into what may be a profitable direction for a project.

[James Weekes]

I read, in an interview, that a lot of Lee Friedlander's categories were discovered after he shot them. He would realize that he had shot hundreds of pictures of a car he was in, from the inside. There were a number like that that he would recognize as a project, post shooting. It resonates with me and the way that I shoot.

[Mike Rosenlof]

So Mike, how DID that Japanese maple do this year?

I love those trees but Colorado is a little bit rough for most of them.

[Just great. It's fully leafed and apparently healthy. I'm thinking of getting it pruned. --Mike]

[Kenneth Tanaka]

This is a good photographic topic, Mike. There's certainly no reason why a single photograph or photographic experience shouldn't inspire you to pursue a deeper and/or longer investigation. That's actually how my longest-term "project" began in 2004, with a single photograph that suggested greater possibilities. That project continues for me today.

But just what represents a "project"? Some think of their vacation snaps as a project. I define a photographic "project" along art world lines. Let me see if I can construct a concise definition for a personal photo project:

"A personal (non-commercial) photographic project represents the intentional pursuit of a subject along conceptual and/or investigatory lines, resulting in an end-product of two or more images."

I think that definition works for me as it encompasses all of my projects as well as those of others that I know of.

I have two points here. First, and most important, regardless of what you call your camera work just have fun with it. Make it meaningful and/or commemorative to you.

Secondly, I believe strongly in the vast potential of working creatively with premeditation. Yes, back-loading a "project" through retrospective selection can be fun. (I know a very prominent photographer who filled an entire museum show with such work!) But you'll learn and gain little from it. Photographic projects are absolutely essential especially for amateurs to strengthen image-making skills. Professionals become stronger by tackling challenging and complex assignments. Amateurs must push themselves to expand their skills through self-assigned projects whether they're one-day or multi-year, globe-trotting or backyard. Learning to express yourself with your camera, beyond "gee that's pretty", is how you develop a voice with your lens. Anybody can take a picture today. (And nearly everybody does!) Few have developed any communication skills with their camera.

[Hugh O. Smith]

When I shoot a documentary, they usually "surprise" me. I start shooting a subject and the project appears.
I recently completed a project in the Baja re: the local brickmakers and it surprised ME!
It will soon be in print.
I try to shoot locals with interesting jobs (at least for us gringos).
Just saying.
Mi dos pesos.

[Jay Pastelak]

I've never thought of projects until I was well into a set of photos, when I could lay them out and think, "Oh. So this is what I'm doing." And then I'd do it consciously until at some point a voice would say "enough" and I'd go on. But I usually make the same set of pictures--I can see in what I shot last week vestiges of what I shot 40 years ago.

I don't know this is completely on topic but we took a week's vacation in Iceland this past June. We did a road trip around the Ring Road and naturally I brought cameras: my Pentax K-1 with a couple of lenses. And a tripod to utilize the pixel-shift mode, which I used once to make four exposures. Figures.

The Icelandic landscape is barren and desolate and I wasn't sure how to approach it. I found myself channeling Timothy O'Sullivan, and maybe Eliot Porter and now that I think of it, Minor White. I made a lot of stitches...but the project aspect: I have an abiding disdain for conceptual photography because most of the concepts are pretty pedestrian. Plus, I'm really not interested in photos that illustrate pages of verbiage explaining to me why I should appreciate the photos or the concept they claim to illustrate. I think it was Lee Friedlander who observed, "They're pictures. You look at them."

So I'm walking about another waterfall in another rain and I look down and see footprints and think, "Conceptual parody!" I decide, as a joke for a friend, to shoot a couple of footprints, make really nice renderings, and write about how these photos are a protest against the degradation of scenic grandeur by people visiting it.

I get home and begin working with the files and Damn! if I don't like the footprints as photographs. Which leads to a little Minor White-esque portfolio of rocks and things, the close-ups I shot because I couldn't quite reconcile the landscape. Who'd a thunk it?

Is it a project? I don't know; I've been pretty busy just processing files to shoot a lot more. But it was a surprise.

[The photos (some of them) are up at https://www.facebook.com/jay.pastelak for those who might want to see them.]

[Roger Bradbury]

I've often found that when there's something I need to do and don't know where to start, the thing is to do the bit I can, then see what's left. This is not totally dissimilar to Mark L. Power's "Shoot, think, shoot."

[Darlene]

Try your best to think of meaning, or feeling, and not just prettiness.

I appreciate this sentence a lot and will be referring to it when I feel it might help with a student's direction (or my own).

P.S. I love projects.

[Eliott James]

I spent a great deal of time in the woods during my boyhood. Just loved it, still do. I set out two winters ago to photograph trails and trees here in the southern U.S. Ended up with many fine shots with the aim of presenting it as a total work. A project for sure. But a critic was unimpressed with it... and on many points he was correct. I ended up not with a unified work but just the best of the single images. All black and white.
Many of these scenes mean a great deal to me personally, beyond caring what anyone else thinks about them. They are on my walls as well as my website. Many lessons learned. I have two other projects that are more long term due to needing to get back to their location.
A very good subject here with many good comments.