Lately my thoughts have turned to the topic of photo projects, mainly because a new project just popped in to my universe and brought with it creative energy as well as some creative direction. I wanted to share a few thoughts on the topic of photo projects while it is forefront in my consciousness, perhaps it might just spark some creative energy on your part.
What is a photo project? Well, it’s anything you want it to be, related to photography. For me, it mainly involves a curated collection of images based around a central theme, forming a collection or a series. But it doesn’t have to be this way for you. A project could be based around practicing a technique, only shooting certain subjects, shooting an image a day for a whole year….whatever you want it to be. It really comes down to a focused effort around a photographic idea.
I have spent some time reflecting on how I choose photo projects, or more accurate, how photo projects choose me. You see, it isn’t that I set out to do a project, it’s that over time as I go about my work of photography, certain themes rise up and become noticed at which time I can then choose to consider them as a project or pass them by and let the theme sit for a while. We recently interviewed Huntington Witherill on our podcast, We Talk Photo, and he spoke eloquently about how projects find him and how he sees himself as a “collector” of images that can then be put together later in to a collection/series. Please give that episode a listen to hear Huntingtons thoughts on this subject.
I’ll share a little bit on how my projects come to life. For starters, I don’t sit at my desk and choose a project and then go out and capture images for that project. As I am out in the field, I photograph what interests me, no matter the subject. That interest is largely fueled by the light that is available, patterns, textures, colors, etc. Not necessarily subjects. So I typically come home from a shoot with a variety of images. As an example, from my recent workshop in the Tetons, I came home with the expected grand landscape images and wildlife shots, plus, lots of shots of shadows, backlit trees, abstracts and close-ups from the side of barns. At one point I laughed to myself that here I was, in this amazing landscape all around me, and I had a macro lens close up to the side of the barn! See, that’s what interested me at the time and I wanted to capture the patterns, colors and textures of the wood. As a result of this trip, I came home with a wide variety of images in my collection.
At this point, I have to admit that I’ve always had a thing for wood. From woodshop in high school, growing up with Scandinavian teak furniture, to living in Oregon with millions of trees, wood is something that been in my life and something that has resonated with me. I count myself as fortunate that over my life I have taken the time to slow down and pay attention to wood, which is an amazing natural creation that is strong, resilient, beautiful and can tell so many stories if you pay attention and listen. So it was only natural that in my photography, I would notice wood and end up taking images of it.
It was this confluence of events, the Tetons workshop and my love of wood, that my latest project sprang forth in to my field of view to be noticed and evaluated. 
There was one image in particular that I came home with that really resonated with me that sparked this realization. This image here of a rusted nut and some beautifully weathered wood. The tonality of the rust along with the color of the wood, the shape of the cracks in the wood, the weathered features on the wood…it all spoke volumes to me. It’s ok if it doesn’t spark the same reaction in you, remember, art is in the eye of the beholder. Because I had such an emotional reaction to this image, it sparked the thought that I have a lot of images of wood that I like and I could probably pull together a collection of images to make a decent portfolio around this subject. I didn’t put any constraints on myself for what types of images would be included, just that it was about wood. So, I started combing through my archives to pull together various images that represented the subject well, and my own vision for how I see wood. Textures, tonality, shape and movement…there is just so much potential with this subject. I didn’t care if the wood was milled by the hands of man, or in its natural setting, if it was about wood, it got added to the collection for review/curation. This is the stage that I’m at now, is pulling together all of the images I want to consider for the collection. The next step will be to take a critical look at each image and cull down the collection to a cohesive set of images. And on that note, I don’t have any preconceived ideas about how many images should be in this collection, or if they are vertical or horizontal, color or monochrome….at this point I’m just looking for cohesiveness of images that can tell a compelling story about how cool I think wood is.
Based upon how many images I find, I may have enough to create a collection and begin the next steps. Or, I may not. If I don’t, then my current collection will stay together as a theme on my hard drive until I collect more images through the normal course of my photographic work. That’s the beauty of photo projects in my opinion, they don’t have to be started and finished in one effort. In fact, I typically have 2-3 different projects in process at any one time. Some projects can, and typically do, span multiple years before I consider them finished. On the wood project, now that is officially a project, this has been going on for almost 10 years now. The featured photograph above of a rootball of a bristlecone pine tree, one of my first really great wood photographs, was taken 10 years ago in the Eastern Sierras. While the latest images were just taken last month. This project, which I didn’t know was a project, started a long time ago and I’m sure it’s got more time to go yet before it is considered done.
As I said, I go about collecting images on various topics and then have a catalog of images to look through to pull together images for photo projects. One of the other projects that surfaced a couple of years ago was around the topic of circles. As a photographer, I am drawn to shapes in the scenes that I photograph. 
As I said earlier, I photograph light, texture, pattern, shape and colors, so I tend to notice details around me that aren’t necessarily about an overt subject. Instead, I am paying attention to other details in a scene, hence, I started seeing more circles around me. I came to the realization a couple years ago that I had a bunch of images of circles in my collection. So, I started pulling together all of my circle images in to a collection. At the time I did the initial pull, I didn’t have enough to create a collection and feel like I was finished, so I decided that this was still a work in progress with the goal to add more images to the collection. When will I be done with this project? I honestly don’t know. I guess I will “feel it” when I think it’s ready for further work. So as I go about my photographic work in the future, I will be on the lookout for images of circles that I can add to the collection.
One of the projects I did complete a couple of years ago was focused on rust. Yes, rust. At the time I thought I was weird being focused on rust, yet I kept being drawn to it and photographing different rusty objects, different light and different textures. At some point I felt I was finished and had a cohesive collection, so I turned my thoughts to what’s next. 
I finished the project by processing all of the images and then published a book on the topic. The result was that I ended up selling quite a few of them, which told me that I’m not weird, other people like rust too! Similar to what I see and feel with wood, rust has many different colors and textures and is very rich in possibilities for storytelling. You can tell stories about the items themselves and the stories they may tell about a life well lived and used, or you can work with the tonality and texture of rust, the subject being more secondary in the image.
Even though I said that this project was “done”…it’s not really. Since I love composing rusty photographs, I continue to create images of rust for my personal enjoyment. Rust sparks a creative energy in me to create and compose images that capture the stories of decaying metal. If the new images are worthy enough I will add them to the Rust collection for evaluation against the existing set of images. I won’t predict what’s going to become of the Rust project, but I’m thinking I will probably update my book and release a second edition with updated images.
Since I’m writing this right around the turn of the New Year, you may think that I’m suggesting starting photo projects as part of New Years Resolutions. I’m not! I’m not a big fan of resolutions based on an arbitrary date, especially ones that are creative in nature. It just so happens that the wood project sprang to life in my consciousness right around this time as I was reviewing images from the Tetons. Remember what I said above, that photo projects find me, I don’t find or create them. So please don’t set some lofty ambitious goals around the New Years to undertake a project! 
Only start a project if you are feeling some creative energy towards that project…it’s a feeling thing, not a thinking thing.
What I have experienced as well in pulling together images for various projects is that it gives me a good look at my artistry over time, through various locations, different lighting and conditions and helps me to see trends in myself, areas to improve upon and good things like that. It also helps me to shape my own self-opinion of myself as an artist. My “voice” if you will. I can start to see how I interpret different scenes and approach different shapes and textures, which gives me insights that are interesting and may help me improve as an artist, photographer and visual communicator.
One final point about photo projects is around the audience for the project. In my opinion, there is only one person in the audience for these projects…that one person is you! I don’t create collections or projects for anyone other than myself. As I said, I felt a bit weird working on the rust project and it was the thoughts about how others might perceive the project that brought the weird feelings. If I excluded any external opinions, I was completely happy inside myself working on the project and it felt completely normal to me. For Rust, I pushed through and discarded any thoughts of external reactions to get to the finish line! Don’t let external influences or opinions shape your feelings about where you are feeling creative energy for photo projects. Do it for you and if others happen to like it, great! If not, no worries because your collection is for you as the artist.
I’d be curious to hear if you have any photo projects in process and if so, what are they? I wanted to share a few of my projects with you so that it may spark something in you. Likewise, hearing from you also can create a spark in me, or if nothing else, gives me insight in to how others think and see the world around us. If you don’t have any projects right now, or have never done one, I would like to challenge you to spend some time this winter going through your archives and see if you can spot any trends in your images that you could bring together into a project or collection. My guess is that you have several themes in your portfolio that could be turned in to a curated project. Take a look and if you feel a spark of inspiration or creativity, listen to that little voice and go with it!
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