You love taking photographs. You take them constantly. But then that’s it. There they sit and you are at a loss with what exactly to do with them. Or maybe you are feeling a bit directionless or are in a creative rut. Well, my friend, let me introduce you to the personal project.

Personal projects are a great way to organize your photos and your brain. It gives you a framework for making your art and the viewing a framework for how they should be viewing and interpreting your work.

There are different ways you can go about starting a personal project. It’s up to you if you want to plan out your project before you start shooting or if you want to go through your current work and pull out images. Both methods are equally valid; it just depends how you prefer to work. Give them both a shot and see which way you connect with more. For me is depends on the project, sometimes I go in with a specific idea and as I photograph and ruminate on it my work with further develop. Other times I notice a theme that I have been unconsciously drawn to and that pull past photos that speak to the theme.

Pick a Theme

Really anything you can think up can be your theme; it can be something concrete like a color, or abstract like a feeling. Since you are here at Sham of the Perfect I’m going to make a huge leap of faith and say you like family documentary photography (I know, it’s a bananas assumption to make), so for the purpose of this exercise we will focus on family related themes. Many of you photograph personal projects already (think of 365s, 100 days of summer, etc.), the key is then really honing in on those photographs and making them a cohesive set. You could focus a personal project to explore relationships between siblings, across generations, or even simplify the theme to just be an individual person. Once you have decided on a topic it is then time to create a body of work.

Old Work

The first thing I like to do is go back through old work and create a catalog in Lightroom comprised of photos that relate to my theme. I know other people who use the keywording in Lightroom to achieve the same result. There really is no one way to do it, what’s more important is that it makes sense to you and helps keep your work organized. Of course, you could also skip this step completely and jump right to creating new work.

New Work

Once you have reviewed your old work (if you choose to do so), it is time to go out and shoot with purpose. Maybe while reviewing your old work you noticed holes in your photographs and have a specific composition, subject, or emotion you are after. Or maybe you will just continue to go forth and photograph just with a better guiding vision as you keep your eyes open to make photographs that are on theme.

 

Editing

A project should be cohesive and editing plays a big part in that. You need to decide what the look your photos is going to be; will the photos be in color or black & white? Will their orientation be landscape or portrait? I am a big believer that you have to pick either color or monochrome, no mixing the two (but of course their are exceptions to every rule). However, I think the orientation rule can be a but more lenient. If you have a healthy mix of the two it can work, but it won’t work if you have 29 landscape orientation and one portrait orientation. On top of picking color or monochrome you also need to decide within in those parameters what your editing will look like. Consistency is key to make your project cohesive. This is why I like to keep my raw files in their own catalog in LR so that I can revisit my editing and update it as needed.

Sequencing

After you have a healthy amount of photos that fit your theme it is time to become a bit ruthless. I know it is hard, but you must kill your darlings and cull, cull, cull. Only pick your best work to be part of your project. A good number to aim for is between 20-30 finished images to make up your project. When selecting these, not only do they need to be the best of what is there, they also need to not be redundant. Each photo should say something different and be another piece of the puzzle. It quickly gets tedious if your project has shot after shot that repeats itself. Once you have chosen your top photos, that doesn’t mean that it is set permanently. It is your project, you can come back and revisit it whenever you wish- adding new photos, reevaluating the old. Projects can have set periods of time or they can go on endlessly, it really depends what fits with your vision. I find it can be helpful to print out images and see them in person to play with their sequencing. The prints don’t need to be giant or fancy, just something to stick up on the wall and be able to physically move. I was taught in art school the value of having your art surprise you. Hang it up. Leave the room. Engage in another activity so that you aren’t thinking about your work, then come back in to the room and take in your work with fresh eyes. Things will become clear when you are surprised by your work in this way.

Share 

When you feel ready, it is time to share your work with the world.  This can be done through your website, on social media, with a gallery show, a book, or a completely out of the box idea. When you share your project you should have a title and a statement that goes along with it that gives the viewer a deeper understanding of your work. Then there is the most important part: be proud of what you have accomplished, take stock of what you have learned, and keep making photographs.

 

 

Sweet sibling cuddles. The chaos of the morning routine as you try to hustle three kids out the door in various states of dress. The rich layering of your children playing together in the front yard, your girls tugging on a doll in the background and their brother passing through the front of the frame on his tricycle. Family documentary images are deep with meaning, connection, and activity, the beautiful mess that we love to capture and share here at Sham of the Perfect.

But what happens if you have just one child? Where does the frame that you see life through everyday fit into that hive of activity? How do you show beautiful messes when your life is, by nature, just a bit more orderly, a tad quieter, or the main interactions are between you – behind the camera – and the solo child in front of you?

That’s a question that we – Robin and Michelle, two of contributing photographers here at Sham, and mothers of only children – have often found ourselves struggling with, each in different ways.

When so much of the aesthetic behind family documentary is based on pulling back the curtain of orderly perfection presented in other styles of photography in order to reveal the chaos and mess beneath, how do your photos fit in when the curtain reveals a much less bananas reality?

Here’s our perspective…

Michelle

Before submitting my images to Sham every week for the past two years, I have often found myself questioning: does this image look documentary?  It’s a telling question.

Of course, having taken the photo, I knew whether the photo was actually taken with a documentary approach or not but my question was about whether other people would believe that. Being authentic and looking authentic are not the same thing sometimes.

I remember when we first started our IG account for Sham, we would feature these awesome family moments with incredible lighting and technique, and our followers would sometimes ask: “Where’s the mess?” The insinuation was that the photo wasn’t “documentary” or true to the concept of “the sham of perfection” if it was too clean both in terms of composition and the scene itself. While there’s a legitimate concern there, it did raise the question of what is documentary? One of our founding members, Lacey Monroe, answered that so well in a recent article published on this blog.

“…documentary photography refers to the approach of photographing something exactly as it is without any interference or direction from the photographer.”

You can’t always tell as a viewer whether an image was actually taken without interference or direction.

As a mom of an only child, and especially a fairly quiet and studious one who has only become more so over the last couple of years, this often poses an interesting conundrum. Because my house, as imperfect as it really is in all the dark little corners, is generally pretty tidy for the most part. And my daughter isn’t playing tag with a brother or sister down the hallways, she’s sitting on the couch quietly reading a book, or playing in a patch of light with her Legos, or making dinner with me in the kitchen. Sure she interacts with dad and he’s a willing subject, but he’s no 5-year-old sibling with chocolate smeared all over his face, pouncing on her in just his underwear and mismatched socks. (Ok, maybe the latter but I’m not sure he’d let me share those photos.)

 

So, I often end up asking myself if my often quiet captures, generally absent too much chaos, movement, mess, and even interaction, “fit” in this project. I have even found myself actively trying to find ways to instigate activities that might result in an image that is more of all those things. And then I realize… yeah, that’s actually not documentary, Michelle.

Robin

That part about Michelle’s house tending to be a little tidier and a little quieter than larger families made me laugh because my life is often neither tidy nor quiet. As I was reading what Michelle wrote, my son was playing with the hose in the backyard dressed in his superman shirt and cape (but no pants because they were already soaking wet and tossed aside) and waving the hose around spraying water everywhere and yelling wildly. A few minutes later, he was down to just underwear and rolling around in a mud puddle. The new blue superman shirt had stained his shoulders and upper back blue when it got wet, and he was throwing handfuls of mud into the woods yelling that he was a mud monster. I took a quick video and shared it with Michelle and noted just how loud and messy MY reality is.

But despite having plenty of those loud, messy moments to photograph, I still feel, like Michelle, that my pictures often aren’t good enough for my weekly submission to Sham of the Perfect. Many times when I look through my photos on the computer, I find I have a lot of quieter pictures of my son playing with Legos, doing his school work, or reading a book. The photos don’t seem interesting enough, and when deciding what photo to submit, I wonder “is there enough interaction? Does this photo have a good enough moment?”

Because one of the most important aspects of documentary photography is taking the picture at the right moment. I like to compose my photo and then try to wait for that gesture, reaction, or interaction before hitting the shutter, and often that doesn’t happen when I’m taking pictures of my son. Or more correctly, I don’t want to sit and wait for that gesture to happen because my son is more interested in playing with me than in me being our family historian. 

So the gestures between us often remain off camera and are never photographed, but having the perfect photo of our interaction will never trump having a real life connection with him. 

Some of my pictures might lack the interaction that a larger group of siblings might have, but I have to remind myself that that’s ok. The goal of documentary photography is to photograph things how they really are, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m good at telling people that their ordinary life is beautiful and worth photographing, but sometimes I need to remind myself of that, too. 

Michelle 

Yes, whenever I get stuck in that mindset I have to stop and give myself a little slap on the cheek. 

My life – and Robin’s – might not look like yours but it’s no less real as a result. Standing in that truth and embracing it is something I am constantly working on.

Going back to what Robin said about much of the interaction happening off-camera, between her and her son, that’s another aspect I am working on: trying to capture the relationship that I have with my daughter in a documentary way. Like for Robin and her son, “I” am the person she is interacting with in most situations and, being behind the camera, this means a connection between us is often through the lens.  

Is it documentary if I, as the photographer, am the one whose relationship with the subject I am exploring? Typically, documentary work requires the photographer to take on a passive, fly-on-the-wall approach, to be purposefully absent from the image. So, how do I represent my relationship with her in a documentary way without living my life in front of a tripod and holding a remote?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question… yet. I experiment when I have time but rarely have anything I feel is ready to share. In this exploration, I am inspired by the work of fellow photographer Meredith McGrane, whose personal project The One Love, documents her relationship with her daughter, an only child, by finding creative ways to represent herself and her daughter, together in the frame without a tripod or timer. One of my favorite images is of her and her daughter playing with hula hoops; you know she’s there just by the edge of her own hoop spinning in the bottom of the frame. I love that because, when I’m behind the camera, that’s where I live: a foot or a hand or soft tummy at the bottom of the frame. 

Robin

Yes, I was introduced to Meredith McGrane’s work several months ago, and it inspired me want to get into the frame more often. I loved the way she made me feel as if I were experiencing the photo with her and her daughter. Like Michelle, I am working on being in the photo and still shooting in a documentary way. 

This year I’ve also tried to incorporate more layering into my photos. Layering is a technique that involves using foreground, subject, and background so that all the layers of the image work together to tell a story. Since I don’t usually have other people around to create layers for me, I have to be more creative with my layers. I’ve been using windows and doorways and even cereal boxes like in the picture below, but this is definitely something I would like to improve on.

Michelle

Layering is also a big area of exploration for me also. I dedicated one week of my 365 this year to trying to creating more layers in my images and it was hard to find enough activity to make it work. Sure, I can layer with inanimate objects but that’s not all that interesting. At the end of the day, our family’s reality with two working parents and a kid in 2nd grade is me making dinner, my daughter doing homework, and then all of us collapsing on the couch for an episode of House Hunters Renovation before bedtime. There really isn’t a whole lot to work with there most nights. Working on that on weekends and in client sessions is definitely top-of-mind this year. 

Of course, I bet if we had multiple kids we’d be dying for some quieter moments and downtime to photograph. I have to remind myself the grass is always greener and these challenges just make us better photographers.

 

Michelle McDaid is a British ex-pat and only child herself, who currently lives in Sacramento, CA. You can see more of her work over on Memories by Michelle Photography, on Facebook, or follow along with her 365 project on Instagram.

Robin Stephenson is a homeschool mama who loves to read and is addicted to 365 photography projects. You can see more of her 365 photos at The Everyday.