Lenticular & Contrail #1. Boulder County, Colorado, 2012
Lately, rather than collecting random images, I tend to work my photography into various themes, projects or photo essays. My file organization is beginning to reflect this more and more: Ice, Fog, Americana, Clouds, Self-Portraits, Eyes, The Ranch, A Parking Lot, Boulder County Open Space, Sugarloaf Mountain, and even Contrails (as in the image above).
Choosing a particular topic and then trying to put together, say, a dozen related images to tell the story of that theme is a challenge but it can help focus your eye, your thinking, and your photography–at least that is what I have found. Everyone will have their own ideas, but I try to make sure all the photographs in any given photo essay are of the same post-processing style and the same dimensions and that they have some sort of cohesiveness as a group. In the end, the group of images you assemble should tell a story, describe an event or place, or evoke an emotion–or even all of this!
Try giving yourself a theme or photo essay as a project. Some fun possible ideas are…your block where you live, your garden, your child or children (may be difficult to be concise here!), a town park, a tree in different seasons/lighting, a hospital stay, your grandparent, a pet, eyes, feet, hands, claws, storefronts, a riot or protest, the color red, beards, street performers, grain elevators, reflections, clocks, forest fires, drought, storms…one could go on forever!
Your photo essay could stand alone as just a series of images, or you could add text–titles, explanations or short paragraphs. You could put your photos together in one large poster-montage, or print, mat and frame them separately. Put some thought into the order of your images…Which one should be first? Which one last? In what overall order should they be placed? Once again, there are really no firm rules except that you follow the instincts of your artistic mini-me.
To give you some inspiration, here is an incredibly sobering photo essay, with text, by Chirodeep Chaudhuri about a cancer ward in India.
To end on a lighter note, take a gander at Herman Krieger’s well-seen and humorous photo essay he calls Churches ad hoc. (While you’re at it, click over to his Mall-aise essay–that one’s pretty good, too. The guy has a way with his image titles!)
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