Goals for 2011

With the arrival of the new year, I thought I'd lay out some goals for myself for 2011:

First of all, no 52 weeks or 365 projects. The 52 weeks thing went pretty well for me last year, but there were times when I was in a bit of a rut with my photography, and forcing myself to come up with an image every week had more of a negative effect on my creativity than I thought it would. Rather than set a quantity of photos to take this year, my goal is to improve the quality of my photography. I hope to do this by putting more planning and forethought into my images, looking ahead a few months at a time to decide when and where I want to go shoot. I didn't capture nearly as many fall photos as I had wanted this year, and a big part of that was the lack of planning on my part - the leaves changed, and I went "OMG I have to shoot!" but didn't know where to start.

I would like to start (and hopefully finish) a documentary project that I've been kicking around for about a year now. I plan on going to the local laundromat and photographing/interviewing people there, and hopefully compiling it into a book of some sort. I expect that I'll get some interesting stories and conversations out of it, and hopefully some good photos to go with it. This also falls into the "get over your fear of photographing strangers" category, I'm hoping that the boredom of waiting for laundry will make people more amenable to me.

I plan on shooting my laundromat project on film, which is another goal for the year. I've been slowly collecting the necessary equipment to develop my own black and white (thanks in large part to my dad giving me his entire darkroom setup), so I plan on doing that somewhat regularly this year. I'm also liberating a 4x5 view camera from my dad's closet, so I'll be learning how to use that. I plan on blogging about the 4x5, and I'll probably do a few posts on shooting and developing your own black and white.

My biggest project this year will be National Photo Essay Month (aka NaPhoEMo) during November. A play on NaNoWriMo, the idea is to do the photographic equivalent of 50,000 words of a novel. Since a picture is worth 1,000 words, that translates into a 50 image photo essay. 50 images is a *lot* for a photo essay, so the scope will have to be large enough to avoid redundancy and filler. I may set myself up for success by cutting that number in half (25 photos), at least for the first year. I'll be blogging more about that and trying to drum up a group of people for the project as it gets closer, so start thinking about a photo project that you've been interested in.

What are your goals for 2011? Do you have any projects in mind? Where do you want your photography to go this year?

~S

[title of blog] on flickr

NaPhoEMo

As you may or may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a novel between November 1st and 30th. That works out to something like 1,667 words/day, which is no small task (especially if you're not usually a writer). I am not much of a writer, and I don't really have any interest in writing a novel, but I like the spirit of the challenge. It's similar to the 365 projects that photographers take on in that it forces you to be productive every day, even if you're not feeling particularly creative or inspired.

When I saw the NaNoWriMo tags popping up on twitter again, I started thinking about a good photography project to go along with it. I finally had my "ah hah!" moment. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the photographic equivalent of NaNoWriMo is 50 images that come together to tell a story (50 images x 1,000 words each = 50,000 words). This means that November is now also National Photo Essay Month, or NaPhoEMo (doesn't have quite the same flow as NaNoWriMo, but I think it works).

Sadly, this brilliant epiphany came to me a little late for me to execute it within the month. 50 images in a photo essay is a lot, and for each of them to be meaningful will require a lot of planning and editing. I'm writing about it here to get the idea down for next year, and to hopefully inspire a few of you in the process. I'll make a much bigger deal about it leading up to November 2011, and maybe we can get a little group going.

What do you think? Is NaPhoEMo the next big thing?

~S

[title of blog] on flickr