Starting “ A photo A week”-Creative 52 is exciting, intimidating and challenging.
After reading the introduction to Lindsay Adler’s book Creative 52 and realizing she created a whole new portfolio in a year made my motivation stronger to take on this project.
“A photo a day” was challenging but I did not feel the pressure to create a great picture everyday. OK was just OK some days and it was about completing the journey and learning from the experience, I really didn’t not have any hopes upon completion of the project.
However, with Creative 52 I am also challenging myself to create new portfolio images.
After being out of the daily shooting game for a while now, I realize how rusty I am. I use to be able to walk into a situation with full confidence that I would walk out of the assignment with a nice moment well composed in 15-30 minutes. If I had more time that would be great.
Now, I have found it takes me 30 minutes or so to warm up and get into the groove.
I also realize that I cannot just rely on high ISO to get me through difficult lighting situations and I need to get over my fear of lighting and focus on more than just capturing a nice moment.
I recognize I need to re-learn, re-focus, grow and discover the type of photographer I want to be.
I noticed with “A photo a day” many of my images were details and objects-not to many moments found in this body of the work. With Creative 52 my goal is to have a human in element in all of them.
I am not sure if want the work to fit a certain genre of my photography for example Lifestyle/Consumer portraiture (which I am still debating about) or if I should focus on documentary/editorial work. I hope this challenges gives me a clearer picture of where I want to go. For now I want to focusing on getting my groove back and making strong individual images.
I have to admit there may be times I will deviate from the list in Creative 52 but I see plenty of opportunity to revisit past themes in the book and create series out of them.
The challenge for Week 1-”Create an image based on a single color: really excited me but I had no starting point what so ever.
My first inspiration came from JeongMee Yoon’s “The Pink & Blue Project”.
http://www.americanphotomag.com/photo-gallery/2012/04/girls-and-boys-their-color-coded-things
I have always been fascinated by the project and the phenomenon. I originally wanted to try something similar with a friend’s daughter using whatever color they had the most of. Turns out this phenomenon is so prevalent in my circle of friends.
After a quick Google image search using color as my keyword, I quickly focused on the idea of using balloons, so many possibilities. Still my actual shooting idea was vague. I asked a friend if she thought her daughter would be willing to model for me and what her favorite color was and started to build an idea from there.
I soon realized that location is everything and really needs to be one of the first things I decide when creating an image. Thankfully, my subject’s mother quickly offered her bedroom that had a red wall. My subject’s favorite color was red.
The bits and pieces started to come together as I created a notebook for Creative 52 and started to collect visual inspiration and book the shoot.
At the last minute my 5-year-old subject decided she was no longer up for the shoot but her 7-year-old sister gladly replaced her and it turned out to be the better option.
The shoot got off to a slow start but as I warmed up and the subject got more comfortable in front of the camera we were off and running. My model even had some great ideas of her own.
Shooting kids has its own challenges and after an hour and half I started to lose steam.
I did not have all the shots I wanted but my brain was starting to freeze. (I would like to blame it on the cold temperatures outside.)
The results provided me with many of the realizations I wrote about earlier and I am ready to continue pushing myself. I feel this is a good solid start and look forward to challenging myself for the next 51 weeks.
There are probably a few more shoots planned with with balloons and the idea of creating an image based on a single color. What a great challenge.
