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RSalles
16-Dec-2016, 08:38
Hi,

I have designed in the past a couple of photographic projects for my own use, and have accomplished it with a great satisfaction and very good results.
This time I'm in need of another one, but it doesn't materialize so easily as it used to be.

To make myself clear, I name a project an idea founded with resources, a period of time (weeks, months or years) for image capture, and a clear subject. Re-visiting old/accomplished project locations is out of question: as I mean here a really new one.

In this thread, you can share the following points, as you want, or add yours:
- Projects you have completed in the past, and if your expectations were fulfilled (or not, and why),
- Projects you have now, and in which point they are (you can hide details about it, as a half of a project is the impact of surprise, novelty or originality it offers to the audience or the author).
- Your interest can be driven to specific purposes or resources (as the specificity of the subject is one of the most important requirements for project focusing): studio, landscape, macro, aerial, portraiture, social, street photography... You name it.
- If any project you're working connects with any other form of art (dance, architecture, sculpture, music, etc.)
- What's the more limiting factor for you for a project deployment: financial resources, available time, equipment, knowledge, physical condition, other...
- If it's important to you and to which degree to have a project aside, or if you're driven by a spark of inspiration and go out absolutely intuitively and moved only by your inspiration. And if you consider planning a "passion murder" for the way you make your photographs.

So that's it. I want to hear from you your success and failures of the past, and the future plans for the future as well.

Thanks for sharing your past and present experiences, and your plans,

Cheers,

Renato

h2oman
16-Dec-2016, 16:39
OK, I'll bite. I occasionally bicycle with my wife and friends in farming areas near where I live. I decided to carry a camera with me once, and came home with this image:

158769

Some time later my wife needed to do some work at the rural school where she is employed, and we decided to combine it with a bike ride and some photographing for me while she worked. On the drive out I made this photograph:

158770

I again carried my camera on the bike ride, and captured this image:

158771

And finally, while she worked I found this:

158772

From those images a project was born, with the subject being the human farming landscape of the area where I live. The project has no definite timeline, and will probably continue for many years. That said, I hope to have a fairly complete body of work in another year or so that I could share in a local showing. I will post a few more images in a following post.

This body of work is definitely influenced by the work of David Plowden, but hopefully contains my own stamp. I have attempted to present the subjects in a way that indicates its visual interest but is not overly sentimental or dramatic. I believe this is true to the feelings of those who live and work in these areas.

I have one other ongoing project that arose in the same manner - I found that I had accumulated a small body of related images and decided to expand those into a project. There is another project I had and may try to resurrect, but in that case I decided on the project and THEN started photographing. That may have been a mistake, because it hasn't gone much of anywhere. I think I will return to that project with a different (and particular) camera and see if I can make it work.

I don't know if this is the kind of thing you are looking for, but it's what I've got!

h2oman
16-Dec-2016, 16:42
Here are a few more images:

158781 158782 158783 158784

RSalles
16-Dec-2016, 16:59
h2oman,

That's another approach that I find definitively very interesting: start with a small images set and THEN define a project which encompasses that set, adding more (in number of images, deepness, locations, etc).

There's a guy here who have made a railroad project in NYC and he posted some pics of the show he made some time ago - not related with yours, just as a side note of my memory. I forgot his nick, but there is indeed a small chance he drive his attention around this post to talk more about it, it would be interesting to know how his idea has emerged.

Anyway, that's the way things happens, with a bike ride around town, observing, taking a shot here and another down there... We can't forget that our "thing" is visually driven: with just a pen and a paper sheet only, we usually do not go any further: we need some visual motor to make us move - in our case, by visual motor I mean pictures.

Cheers,

Renato

RSalles
16-Dec-2016, 17:02
Here are a few more images:



NICE! You know what I immediately liked in this series? Apart the subject, the uniformity of the color pallet you have used to show it. It's a strong cohesive medium, really is.

Cheers,

jp
16-Dec-2016, 18:13
I don't plan photography shooting any further than making time in a busy life. An occasional show requires planning too.

Otherwise, I will probably die of old age (currently 41) shooting woods and shore in my area.

A show or blurb book is a good incentive assure order if you need it.

Winger
16-Dec-2016, 18:52
I also tend to "start" a project after I've found a connection between other images I've already done. I have a couple of ideas I'm kinda trying to expand. The most limiting thing for me is time. I don't get to shoot when I want to and have to find subjects that work with the light I have, not always the light I wish I had.

John Kasaian
16-Dec-2016, 19:23
Hmmm....one project I've long wanted to do is make a ULF pin hole camera out of an old wine barrel, put it in the bed of a pick up truck and make photos of interesting looking wineries. Unfortunately I "clunkered" my pick up back in 2009 :(

h2oman
16-Dec-2016, 20:15
There's a guy here who have made a railroad project in NYC and he posted some pics of the show he made some time ago - not related with yours, just as a side note of my memory. I forgot his nick, but there is indeed a small chance he drive his attention around this post to talk more about it, it would be interesting to know how his idea has emerged.


That's http://john-sanderson.com/ I'm a huge fan of his work, and should have mentioned him as an influence, especially his railroad landscapes series.

RSalles
16-Dec-2016, 20:53
John,

Preliminary steps of the project in question:
a) fix the damn pick-up ASAP
I found your idea a crazy/interesting one!
As a side note, the barrel on the truck is a very good procedure: we're often invited to proof the wine quality in this circumstances, what poses an issue with long exposures/steady required by its f128, f256 pinhole aperture.

Aqua-man,

You've nailed it, John Sanderson, it's the guy's name,

Cheers,

Renato

h2oman
16-Dec-2016, 21:34
Hmmm....one project I've long wanted to do is make a ULF pin hole camera out of an old wine barrel, put it in the bed of a pick up truck and make photos of interesting looking wineries. Unfortunately I "clunkered" my pick up back in 2009 :(

Those of us who are less refined could make ours out of a keg and drive around to "keggers!"

stawastawa
16-Dec-2016, 22:26
I have a few projects going.

A) I come across subject matter and it collects in the house. I don't tend to then photograph it often enough. A difficulty with having time, motivation, and available light all come together. also struggling to find backgrounds for the subject matter.

B) This project is more of an idea, but not clear of the plan. the images have been hit and miss, and currently lack cohesion. again, finding backdrops and choosing framing that works to create cohesion being difficulties. Not having a clear vision means I almost never have time and motivation to experiment with it.

C) lots of travel photography images stockpiled =)


I tend to shoot a lot and gather inspiration, but don't tend to go back and expand the idea.
I also tend to stock-pile images and not look at them again.

The few books I have made I have planned out what I want and standardized formating and workflow and then done a bit of a marathone to select images, layout and edit.

Two23
17-Dec-2016, 08:42
I have several on-going "project", but all in all I'm not really organized about it. I spent a couple weekends with Sanderson in Chicago (fascinating guy!) During a photography conference he did give a shout out to me for suggesting LF to him about ten years ago when he was only shooting digital. I too have shot a lot of railroad stuff, especially at night with flash. Lately I've gone back to my "roots". It was abandoned farms and small towns that got me shooting 4x5 twenty years ago.

Kent in SD

Tin Can
17-Dec-2016, 10:08
An Image set came to me, in twilight slumber.
Eureka.

Hopefull, subtle, obtuse, yet carry political consistency.

Presenting IRL @ group Spring Print exhibit without digital preview nor purview.

plaubel
17-Dec-2016, 12:08
I am not a typical project photographer, but I have two ideas in my mind.

The first thing is our small town with 7000 inhabitants, probably less.
This 800 years old town practiced agriculture recent century, and here are some ancient buildings, barns, quite far away from rectangles.

But the more interesting thing are the almost hidden courts and yards, which show the true face of our ancient town from time to time from what I have seen.
Unfortunately, this private courts always have closed doors or sliding doors...

Probably I have something special to initiate before I could start the court project.
And I know I better have to start yesterday than tomorrow, but it seems that I need some more time to begin.

The other idea came up maybe two years ago - nothing new of course, but I will give it a try.
I want to show tools and other things which will give an idea of some craftsman's , lawyer's, doctor's and so on environs and/or of their practice.
Something typical, something personal, that's not important.
All I want to hear is "Yes, that's me and my job".

I started up, and I will continue, with 12x16" and Xray film exclusively:

158810

RSalles
17-Dec-2016, 14:21
Stawastawa,

Some years ago I had a very closed winter here in south of Brazil. It was the next year's winter after my first LF camera had arrived to my hands.
I made a series of preliminary shots, with few equipment for LF developing, and in the course of the fall I have grabbed almost everything I needed to shot, develope and scan - at this time I hadn't a enlarger yet.
So, as the winter approached, I had a very affordable studio hardware, 3 speedlights, and a space to fit everything inside.
This room, had a very tall window where the light came trough in the morning, and was perfect til mid-day.
I did arrange a primitive but long table close to this window, and imported with the cheap studio tripods and umbrellas a couple of backdrops made of fabric but just perfect for what I intended to do.
During the day, when time permitted, I walked by the neighborhood, sometimes close to my house, but also far from where I live, getting everything I tough I could manage to make a interesting composition in my improvised studio.
At the end of the winter, I had at hand really good 20 shots with 4x5 b&w film, and the same amount in digital files. This series are the most important part of my actual work, this year I had presented it in 3 different opportunities/photo expositions.
This work also opened my eyes to the fact that there is some sort of hope without natural light. I have waked up to the fact that with bad or poor natural light I don't have to store my tools to the next season - this annoyance was really making me sick.
Just to be clear, I thing that I don't have - except for the 3 speedlights cited above - no more then 150 bucks in studio equipment. That's a limiting factor, of course, to try to work with so few resources, but is a million times better then nothing to work with.

Cheers,

Renato

John Kasaian
17-Dec-2016, 16:46
John,

Preliminary steps of the project in question:
a) fix the damn pick-up ASAP
I found your idea a crazy/interesting one!
As a side note, the barrel on the truck is a very good procedure: we're often invited to proof the wine quality in this circumstances, what poses an issue with long exposures/steady required by its f128, f256 pinhole aperture.

Aqua-man,

You've nailed it, John Sanderson, it's the guy's name,

Cheers,

Renato

Jacking up the frame so it's not resting on the suspension was how I was planning to deal with the stability issue.
I just missed out on a 2009 Tacoma on Craig's List, gosh darn it!

RSalles
19-Dec-2016, 09:14
I'm planning a "Blacksmith" project for the begining of the next year.
In the small town where I live there are nearby 20 of this blacksmith workshops. They fix and modify all sorts of rotary hoes, harvesters, disk mowers, offset disk chisels, tractors, diesel trucks, and pickups. They have usually a forge burning in a corner, soldering equipment, and all sizes of tubes, chains, steel laminated and manual tools to work with. I can't tell you how necessary is the sort of work they do to the economics of the region where I live, and nobody seems to remember it, but only when something brakes or needs to be modified.
Anyway, seems to be a good project, and will take time to prepare, talk to each one, schedule a visit for image take in the less stressed period of the day, and have something printed to show them my intention - as this people usually prefer to see something then just listen to a good speech.

If the work develops as intended, I'll try to show it in the local culture & arts house - my idea is to give them the first opportunity of their life to see themselves in a public place/show. Recognition matters, and I think it will be a nice project, for both me and those blacksmiths.
Obviously it will be all whet printed - a film experience, and a challenge also - I'm thinking about daylight and flash fill light.
Printed in my lab, I have the idea to do it all black and white in 11x14" paper size.

Cheers,

Renato

David Lobato
20-Dec-2016, 07:45
Two years ago I finished a 3 year project on a single subject. As for the next projects, I did some self examination of my negatives and realized one or two subconscious themes. So I'm hatching a couple more projects to pursue based on a few current photos. I travel to some far off places wth my old truck packed with LF cameras and it will take a few years to complete a project.

stawastawa
20-Dec-2016, 21:57
Thank you for sharing your experience Renato, I really ought to learn about speedlights.
I have had some fun with bare bulbs from time to time. But I love "god's softbox" coming through a window (as I like to call the light of cloudy days).


Stawastawa,

Some years ago I had a very closed winter here in south of Brazil. ...
Cheers,

Renato