Photo Challenge: Become a better artist by photographing the same subject
Last year I was given the dream photography job of photographing my own greenhouse right throughout all of the seasons to create a year long photo collection for the manufacturers of the greenhouse - Morrifield Greenhouses. As the year progressed and as I was challenged to continue to come up with more ideas, it made me realise the benefits of placing some restrictions on our photography practice.
Having constraints in place, and being challenged to photograph the same subject expands your creativity rapidly as you are pressed to come up with new ideas for fear of becoming too repetitive. This encourages you to begin to look at the subject with a fresh perspective each time you return to photograph it. I think that there is also something to be said for the fact that new ideas can be borne out of boredom!
To begin choose a subject or a place that you would love to base a series around. Choose something that gets you excited and something that goes through dynamic changes through the seasons. I'm imagining that a favourite deciduous tree would work beautifully - bare branches changing into blossom, then bearing fruit through to autumn colour and back to the beginning of the cycle again. Take the obvious shots first then as you are challenged to come up with new ideas, you can begin to explore some of the ideas below.
Benefits of repetition through photography:
Trains the eye to become more observant: Slowing down, picking up on new details, watching how the light & shadows fall throughout the day and also how they change with the seasons. To become sensitive to your surroundings is possibly one of the most important skills to being able to take interesting photos. Is there a little bee searching out the blossom that you can zoom in on or do the sunrays streaming through the leaves create a beautiful flared effect at a certain time of the day at a particular time of year?
Encourages experimentation: Experiment with composition and angles to come up with new ideas. Try shooting through things like foliage - see the image below where I shot through the standard bay trees which are outside the door of the greenhouse. I always think that these photos make the viewer feel as if they are actually in the setting. Switch between the macro and the micro to find details that you hadn’t thought of before. This was the main thing that I learnt from my photo challenge – to see things from a different perspective which ultimately ended up in more interesting shots.
Developing your style: Creating a body of work is an amazing way of seeing your evolution as an artist. When seeing our body of work come together we can start to see a style emerging. We can begin to see “through lines” in all of our work and then begin to develop and expand on these ideas. This can sometimes take us on a magical journey going a whole new direction to what we were expecting and this is how we evolve as artists. Seeing our work presented as a whole also allows us to look critically at our work to see perhaps what we need to work on.
Create a deeper connection to your environment: As you slow down and return to the same spot time and time again you will gain a deeper knowledge of the place/subject and with it begin to create a deeper connection to it. I think that this intimate knowledge and connection shows in your images and makes more meaningful shots. Can you bring any human elements into your image to show this connection to the place or to help to tell the story? For example, a ladder leaned up against the fruit tree with a laden basket at the base of the tree or a self portrait laying in the shade of the tree.
Developing your technical skills: With a deeper knowledge of our subject and knowing that we can create a solid composition, we can perhaps forgo worrying about composition for a moment and concentrate on refining our technical skills. This gives us a chance to experiment more with different apertures and manual settings. We can experiment with shooting on a timer so that we can be in the shot as well. Or possibly trying out any other interesting camera techniques we have came across like motion blur (this technique can work wonderfully when used in conjunction with the self portrait). With knowledge also comes a deeper sense of trust and confidence in our work.
Creating a beautiful seasonal record: I always find that photo series are a fascinating record that show just how much things really do change over time which you quite often don’t notice in the day to day - look how much that tree grew over a single year. Look how much Aaru grew! Following the seasonal changes can really begin to build a beautiful story that you can use to keep as a personal record and to deepen your connection to your place.
