At this point its wise to crawl over to your computer and research your idea and see if any similar ideas have already been done. When you realize that close to 700 people have already done a project very similar to yours you can expect another week of vomiting, self-loathing, and repeatedly hitting yourself in the head saying “STUPID STUPID STUPID!”.

Once that wears off it’s best to hose yourself down, wipe away that wall of shimmering tears, and just go make a photograph and see if you actually like your idea. Once you have some tests done it’s important to ask yourself…

“Ok. If someone else made this photograph and I saw it hanging in a gallery or in someones book, how would I feel about it?”

Here are your reasonable moves after you ask yourself this question…

1. I hate it. – move on to the next idea.
2. Meh, it’s ok. – move on to the next idea.
3. Its good. – move on to the next idea (or use it as an excercise to find something better)
4. Wow. This is kinda cool. – think about it some more and make it something way better than “kinda cool”.
5. Holy fuck. I didn’t know I had this in me. – pursue idea.

Sometimes we fall in love with ideas because they’re ideas that make sense. That doesn’t mean they’re good. It’s important to stop for a moment and ask yourself if it makes sense for you? Does this kind of work excite and intrigue me or am I just doing it because a thousand other people have and I wanna see if I can too.

But that’s just me…

Dan

P.S.: I wish you didn’t have the devil’s curly hair! ;)

As for the note taking and such I’m not talking really from a technical perspective, that I typically only worry about once I’m already shooting (could be a bad habit, but it works for me). There are just a lot of pieces that need to come together to get my plan off the ground and that’s where my note making is coming into play. For example I’m not making a strict shot list with detailed ideas of framing and such, more the general idea and who I need to get in touch with to gather what I need to make it happen.

Having said that, if this turns into something that I’d like to pitch to whatever, I’m not exactly sure how to go about formalizing the notes and ideas that I have, if that makes any sense.

It’s like when you show up on a set with a specific picture in mind that you absolutely want to get. I don’t know about you, but when I try to pull that level of previsualization it never works out. But when I have more general ideas then tweak them based on the reality of the day, things go great.

So it is with my personal projects: I get an overarching idea, hook up a couple subjects, and see what happens. Then I let the process develop organically from there. Half the time what turns out to be the interesting thing is a complete surprise, not the stuff I wrote down to begin with.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Taking assessment means that you have a measuring stick with which to work. And that gives you both the joy of seeing growth, and the pain of seeing what ain’t workin’. It doesn’t have to be a 20 page plan with gant charts… just a couple of notes and a look-back in quickbooks /notebooks / assignment folders can suffice.

And that latter is even more important than the former. If something isn’t working – change it up.

Then assess later against the measuring points you have identified by taking previous assessments.

To both of you guys, thanks for sticking to this project.

It is something I look forward to each Friday.

And thanks Heather, for bringing it to us.

Glad to hear you’re thinking “personal project”. A couple thoughts on those…..

First, seems to me that there is a big difference between a creative and a personal project. Most creatives I see are pretty much commercial in nature, a way of fleshing out your portfolio. To me a personal project has no real bearing on what you might do commercially, it’s just something you do for the pure hell of it. I see this as a big difference and believe that creatives shouldn’t be mistaken for personal projects. (Not that personal projects won’t get you work. It’s just that the impulse behind them is different.)

And, I might have this backwards, but for me the paying gigs (even tho I mostly love shooting them) are a way to pile up some of the fabulous moolah so I can spend it shooting for myself, with total freedom. My personal projects vary from lasting a week (Christmas in the Mississippi Delta), to four years (USER). I like both approaches. Short and sweet allows you to get your yaya’s out fast. You know: first thought, best thought; come to a conclusion; just react; shoot, don’t worry. That kind of approach. The long term projects really suck up your psyche and time and emotion and that’s swell, too.

I believe that too many photographers get too hung up when it comes to shooting personal projects. They think about it way too much. I say, shoot. After all, photographers take photographs, right?