7 Day Projects

A friend of ours recently started a photography group on Facebook, the "Photo Fun Group", and since this is still the slow season for photographers in wintery Ohio, Heather and I jumped at the chance to join.

If you have a camera, no matter what your level of photographic skill, I definitely suggest you join!

No matter what you do...play guitar...juggle...take pictures...just whatever, you eventually run into these "funks of sameness". Times where you just feel like you're taking the same photo, playing the same note, juggling the same 3 balls...you need a shot of inspiration before you're driven to a shot to the temple.

Especially when it feels like it's been snowing and 15 degrees outside for somewhere around 5 years!!!

Other times you don't even know you're in the "Funk of Sameness" (until maybe you look at some Avedon portraits and realize how much you suck!) Especially when things get really nutso busy, it's easy to just take the same photo, the same angle, use the same lens over and over and not even realize it until you look at someone else's stuff and compare it to your own.

The group is new and evolving but the thing Mark, it's originator, decided to start with as member challenges are 7 Day Projects. 7 days of taking and posting one photo a day, taken on that day, relating to a certain theme. The first theme was "Your Backyard"...every day you had to post a new photo taken in your backyard. This weeks challenge is "Knee Level or Lower"...all photos have to be taken from a height no higher than you knees.

Let me warn you, it's fun AND a big pain in the butt! It forces you to think, plan, experiment, cuss, struggle...and who the heck wants to do that!

And it keeps your camera in your hands at least a few minutes every day. It may be 11:59pm and you're just getting your picture loaded online after having to take some crappy on-camera flash shot of a domino...

But it makes you take a photo...
It makes you look around through the day like a photographer...
It makes you not embarrassed to lay on the floor in front of people...
It makes you look at other peoples takes on the same theme...
It makes you grow...

So join us on Facebook if you can and if you're too shy or just hate us for some reason, do some projects of your own. You'll be surprised how much it can do for you.

Jeffrey