Photography Projects For The New Year

With the new year starting, there are many photography goals. One of the greatest things you can do for those who are new in photography, want to start a new project of their own or those stuck in a creative rut and don’t really know where to go from here and maybe bored with photography, I will show you that there are a couple of self-initiative projects you can do to really drive your creativity and get more familiar with your photography. If you are new, these two projects can really help you out and you actually have a choice of which project you want to choose.

365-project

What do I mean by a project? There are two things you can do in order to get familiar with all the photography related things, get you thinking about different things and to keep your mind creative and actively working to make better photos. The first thing is kind of obvious. Some people have actually heard about this one but nobody has really thought that this is a good idea. I actually have done this one and it’s called the 365 project. What this means is that for the whole year, you have to try and take one cool, creative photo per day. It means taking a really good photo and editing it really nice and maybe posting it in your portfolio, facebook page, just share with your friends or keep it to yourself. Basically, you try and create a very interesting photo per day.

In case you are listening to this, you might be thinking that this doesn’t sound so hard but it’s actually very difficult. I personally did this when I first got my “real camera” and I tried to take a photo every day and while I managed to take some really cool photos, most of them I had really to stretch in order to find something very creative. There was a lot of time when I knew that I wanted to catch a very cool sunset, sunrise or something like that and I would actually have to get up and shoot that photo early in the morning when I wasn’t really used to getting up that early in order to grab that sunrise photo. You have to try and get out of your comfort zone and create a really interesting photo. There are some days you have to get home from work and grab your camera and figure out something interesting and if you can’t figure out something, you just end up pointing at the sea or something like that.

Despite this, the experience really pushes you into creating a really great photo. That’s what we call 365-project, basically taking one photo per day for the whole year and it’s really cool once you get the year done and you get to see all those photos and how you’ve progressed as far as your creativity and quality of your photo from the first day to the last day. This also helps you get used to your camera and also try new photography techniques that you might not have tried in the past and this is a great way to show those off. You can also post the photos in some sort of public platform such as Facebook, and let people know you are doing this bec

ause that keeps you accountable for doing this and also allows people to see what kind of stuff you are up to. If you are a photography business owner, you can actually make a small low tab on your website and say that this is the kind of photos you are doing all year round and people can check in and see. This also updates your website which also helps the SEO. The 365-project can really benefit you if you want to share publicly.

Project-52

Because project 365 can be a little bit difficult, project-52 becomes another option for you to consider. Project-52 is basically taking one photo per week which gives you a little bit of a leeway if you are not able to take a photo per day. However, it can also be difficult because you might let’s say that you’ll slate your project 52 every Friday and by Monday you are already thinking you have 5 more days to figure things out and you end up waiting until the last minute. Personally, I have done this project as well but it took me a long time to come up with something creative.

To help you along for those who are just starting in photography, you probably don’t want to jump straight to project 365use it can be a little overwhelming at times but project 52 is more manageable and easy to track. If you want to start project 52, I have put together a really nice, simple worksheet that will give you some tips and a guide to follow per week. There are some things you can do to help succeed with this project and we will discuss them here briefly. These do not have to be done in the order they are listed but they are just labelled as 1-52 to give you a jest of what they’d follow into.

Rule of thirds photo – This is the first thing you should do and it basically means doing a composition with the rule of thirds. We too can be a self-portrait and by this, I don’t mean taking a selfie with your cellphone, iPhone or something like that but making a really creative self-portrait. As photographers, sometimes we don’t think about taking photos of ourselves and there are times we could use one for ourselves and creating a really nice self-portrait could really help. You get to learn some different ways of taking pictures of yourself and also get some promotional photos for your business.
Light painting – This is yet another topic you can do. It means taking long exposure and shining maybe a flashlight somewhere and light painting something.
Architecture – If you are a portrait photographer and mainly interested in portraits, this topic could make you interested in different fields of photography. Going out and trying to get a really creative architecture photo could be a good one as well. Some examples of this could be fireworks which can be done very well over the holidays, urban decay photos, long exposure photography or iPhone photography not necessary using an iPhone but a smartphone to shoot and edit on your phone before exporting the jpeg to post anywhere you want to post. These are different ways of learning photography.

The list has 52 topics which you can choose from and figure out exactly how you want the photo to come out. You can follow the 52 topics one by one or re-order them the way you need to. However, this is a simple worksheet that you need to get a little familiar with different things in photography. So, doing a project like 365 or 52 is a really great way to get you thinking about different creative aspects of your photography. You can download the worksheet using the link https://sleeklens.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Sleeklens_Project52.pdf