Archive for Photography project ideas

Under-water photography

If you thought photography out in the open air was tricky, you’ve got a surprise coming - Underwater photography represents one of the most challenging and specialized segments in the photography world. It’s fun, it’s creative, and it surrounds you with water, which only has one purpose: To ruin your expensive pride-and-joy photography equipment! Two thirds of the world is covered by water, and while much of it is quite boring and un-photogenic, there are still vast opportunities to capture what is happening beneath the surface. There is a combination of equipment and tecnique required to make this type of photography work for you, include choosing the right camera, making sure it stays safe from water, and finding some way of lighting it all.

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Locks on Toilets

For the past five years or so (with variable amounts of passion - usually low-level, when-I-can-be-bothered; recently, now that I have an iPhone 3GS which has a decent camera, more often), I've been doing an odd little photography projects titled 'Locks on Toilets'. What is it? Well, it does precisely what it says on the tin: It's a relatively large collection of photographs of devices that lock the toilet door so nobody can barge in on you while you're attending to your business. It's an odd little project, which I came up with when I was hideously drunk one night - like all great ideas, in other words, and I just sort of continued doing it. Of course, it's a lot more fun if it's a collaborative project, so I hereby invite you to join in the slightly odd fun...

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Self-Portrait Friday

I'll be perfectly honest with you: I feel a bit sad. Here I am, a world-famous blogger (well, I can't but hope. And my sister lives in Vietnam at the moment, so between London and Hanoi, that covers most of the world, right?), but I haven't yet created any internet memes, so I figured I'd start one right now, along with a cause I get behind fully. It's simple: 1) Take a photo of yourself. A good one. 2) Post a link to it on Twitter, using the #selfportraitfriday hash-tag. Apart from making me super-famous (which is, believe it or not, not my chief objective with this project), getting into the rhythm of taking at least one self-portrait every week is great practice. But why should you bother with self portraits, and why am I so strongly in favour of 'em? Read on, fellow shutter-soldier, for my 10 tips to better self portraits, along with the whats, whens and wherefores of onanistic photography fun.

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The 25 best of urban decay

I've got a guilty pleasure which I'd like to share with you guys - I love urban decay photography; I can spend hours on end browsing Flickr galleries tagged with Urban Decay... Brilliant stuff. I was talking about this particular style/subgenre of photography with my good friend Dave Feltenberger a few months ago, and he was enthused about collecting some of his favourite photographers and sites. So, if you're still left wondering what this whole 'urban decay' thing is all about... Here's your chance to be flabberghasted!

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If you can dream it, you can do it

Planning out the 100% perfect photo shoot can make you a better photographer. Here's how. Think, for a moment, about every single photo shoot that somehow went wrong. The props you wish you had, the equipment you wish you could afford, the models you wish you could hire, the locations you wish you could scope out, light properly, and use as you please. Imagine for a second that you could hire the best make-up people, the best lighting assistants, the best stylists - everything you could possibly dream of. Sounds insane, doesn't it? Perhaps not - There's a lot of limitations on your photography, but many of them will be entirely artificial. To find out what's actually holding you back, put away your camera, and grab a pen and a ream of paper.

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10 ways to break photographer’s block

As a writer, I know the feeling all too well - with a sense of dread and a deep sense of apathy, I stare at the blinking cursor and the completely blank TextMate document. I have ten thousand thoughts and feelings and stories that are chomping at the bit to get told, but it's just so difficult to get started... And the exact same thing can happen to me when I'm taking photos. So... What can you do to get out there and beat photographer's block? What can you do when your camera's batteries are charged, your memory card is fresh, the weather is fabulous, and the light is reflecting tantalizingly off your expensive glass lenses, but your inspiration is just kicking it on a rocking chair on the porch with a cold ice tea, like a metaphor stretched to well beyond the sensible breaking point? Fear ye not, my photo siblings... Here's my Top 10 tips to breaking the photographers' block (or: Ideas for an uninspired photographer)

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The return of street photography

You're a keen photographer, and you find yourself in a city where the world's biggest art festival sneaks up on you. It'd be rude not to do anything, really... But what? Katie Cooke, a long-term friend of mine, who might be more known in the photography world as the queen of pinhole photography, decided to set up a little market stall in the middle of the mayhem, and take photos of people who felt like being photographed. Using a classic Toyp 45CF field camera loaded with Ilford HP5+, she decided to show the Fringe from an unusual angle... We've caught up with her to find out how and why.

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Challenge: Portraiture styles

Have you ever noticed how most photographers tend to develop a very specific photography style? It's a great way to create a very distinctive appearance, of course, but it may also cause you to stagnate as a photographer. Long-term reader of my blog Cristian Galletti posted a comment on my 'loosen up your portraiture style' post a while ago, where he shows off how he manages to use half a dozen completely different photography styles. The quirk? Well, the photos are all of the same model.

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Photographing smoke

Abstract photography is nothing new, and people constantly come up with new -- or re-invent old -- versions of photography techniques. One of the ones that is going like wild-fire (excuse the pun) around the interwebs at the moment is the art of photographing coloured smoke. The trend started with the highly talented Graham Jefferey, of Sensitive Light fame, whose phenomenal photographs went around the world via blogs, We've managed to talk to Graham, and find out how he does his smoke photos...

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Dogma photography

As a kinda-sorta follow-up from my most recent critique, where several of the commenters mentioned that they felt that their photography got better when they imposed rules on themselves, I started thinking: Which other constraints can you put on photography? First of all -- why? Well, in a machoistic kind of way, making rules about the way you take photos is a creative way to think about photography. Take this restraint, for example: For a day, only take photos that have a strong diagonal. It means you start thinking about framing your photographs in a completely different way than you would otherwise. Perhaps you don't get home with a single photo that is actually worth using, but the lessons you learn from the experiment will come in very handy for later photography assignments.

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