7 Ways To Start a Personal Photography Project
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Most photographers already love the idea of a long-term photography project giving them something they can focus on, but aren’t sure where to look for inspiration when it comes to actually starting or finding ideas for them. So I’ve got 7 starting points for you today. They’re all quite open and will require you to do a bit of research or planning, but let’s start with my favourite.
1. Emotions, words & phrases
Start a photography project theme by picking an emotion, word, or phrase: A simple example of this would be picking the emotion "joy" and then creating a body of work full of photos that all capture people in moments of joy. You could pick the word "peace" and then photograph scenes, landscapes, quiet places, and events that all portray that theme.
Getting a bit more complex, picking a phrase such as “Unveiling the Invisible,” you could then use photography to capture emotions or concepts that are difficult to see with the naked eye.
I think you get the idea with this one: dead simple but a super powerful way to spark an idea for a project. Little tidbit, actually, when I first started photography, most of the photos I took were inspired by the word and definition of “distant,” hence why I started creating under the name distantmedia many moons ago.
2. Dig in the crates
Speaking of old work, the next thing you can do to come up with ideas for a photo project is drawing ideas and inspiration from your old photos. It’s likely that your photography would have been very different when you first started, and although the photos may not be in keeping with your current skill level, there may be a really good theme or concept you can draw out from those old images of yours.
Looking back on my old photos, it’s very apparent that most of them were quite sad, lonely images. Almost ghostly. And again, while I wouldn’t shout about them or think that they’re particularly fantastic, it does make me want to create images that follow that particular feeling again. Which is actually what sparked a photography project I’m working on and wrapping my head around at the moment — more on that in about 20 years when I finish it.
3. Outside interests
Next up, you can use your outside interests to start photography projects. By outside interests, I mean other hobbies and stuff you love outside of photography.
Maybe you’re somebody who loves the gym and does a project taking portraits of people you meet while at the gym. If you’re really into golf, why not start a photography project photographing the beauty of the courses you play at?
It’s a win-win using your other interests and incorporating them into your photography ideas because, for the most part, you’re combining multiple passions of yours, which I think has a high potential to lead to great results because you’re going to love getting involved and photographing it.
4. More than just photographers
For number 4, I want to encourage you to spend more time with or looking at other artists’ work.. BUT outside of photography. Experiencing other artists doing their craft, as I’m sure many of you know, is one of the number one ways to feel inspired and get ideas flowing.
So your photography project idea could be spawned due to the heightened creative juices you get from being around other creative people. Maybe it’s something a graphic designer does that catches your eye and leads you to think about more ideas within your photos.
In fact, the photography project could even be done alongside another artist, a merging of your two skills to create something truly unique. Or a little bonus, maybe your project turns into simply documenting those other artists and their craft via photos.
5. Use your locations advantage
Number 5 is something everybody should be able to do, and it’s finding something unique about the area you live in or another area you have easy access to. For example, I live just on the border of Northumberland National Park, and there are 60+ castles in this area, so photography project right there. Been done about a million times already, but you get my example.
It could be that the countryside close by to you has a rich mining history, so you set off and photograph all of the remaining evidence of mines, mining towns, and buildings. Or maybe you do something a bit more vague and open, like simply documenting the people and lifestyle of a certain area, town, or village.
Either way, probably the easiest and most rich way to find an idea for a project is simply looking a bit deeper at a particular area and drawing inspiration from it.
6. Rules and constraints
Next on the list is giving yourself a random or more often silly rule or constraint to create within. I’ve been doing this one myself for about a year now with my 15 photos 1 location series over on YouTube, where I’m making my way up the northeast coastline and only taking 15 photos at each location I visit.
The good thing about this type of project is that it’s probably more about sharpening and improving your skills behind the camera by giving yourself a restriction. And you don’t always have to have a complete set of photos by the end of it, it can be more about a fun learning experience.
But of course, you can take it in the other direction, maybe you give yourself the restriction of only capturing photos that include postboxes, or the rule that you’re going to take photos for a book that are all taken along one single road. A bit like the great road north by Paul Graham.
7. Yours and others stories
The last way to come up with potential ideas for a new photography project, then, is creating with your memories or somebody else’s story in mind.
Two ways to look at this: you could draw from things that you’ve been through in the past, happy and sad memories, maybe something tied to your childhood, a connection to a certain person or place that holds a strong connection to your upbringing.
Or you could base a project on other people’s stories, maybe your grandparents have a particular story, maybe they visited the same place every year on holiday and have old film photos from there, so you go and document that place years later. Maybe your parents came from a small seaside town, so you try to capture what life would have been like growing up there.
This one is definitely one that can get quite personal and will all depend on how far and emotional you’d like to get with your photography project, but it’s certainly a really valuable way to get going with new ideas.
Finally
With those out of the way, I wanted to quickly touch on what I believe to be the most valuable part of running a photography project, because when we think of a collection of work or a finished project, we often think of photo books, and recognition, and all of those glittery appealing bonuses you get from successfully running and completing a project.
I don’t think the main value really has anything to do with what you get back from a project other than self-discovery: You are almost guaranteed to learn new things about yourself, your interests, how you see the world, and the way in which you can take your thoughts and bring them to life with either obvious or cryptic photographs — And to me, gaining that at the end of a project is priceless.
