With two boys in the house, one who’s constantly on the move and the other who’s glued to my hip, I don’t have much time or space to set up photo shoots these days. Still, I need to practice.
I’ve mentioned before how much I love photo assignments and prompts. They’re like warm-up exercises for capturing whatever comes to mind without over thinking or being critical of images and ideas. Simply notice and capture.
On Saturday morning, before basketball practice and another morning nap, I managed to carve out creative time for myself in the midst of chaos. It was that gray in between hour usually reserved for house sprints then snack time followed by I’m bored and I need something to do so I’m going to bounce off the walls because it’s winter and I want to go outside and play time. When I think of assignments and projects, it reminds me of school. Making sure we had to meet the deadline and hoping that we had done our best to at least pass. These days, students don’t really need to worry about deadlines as much, considering they have online writing services that they can use if they are falling behind with assignments/projects. I wish I had that back then! Would have saved me a lot of stress. Never mind.
So yeah, in the middle of all that, I squeezed in a short photo assignment that my five year-old loved and my four month-old slept through.
The assignment:
One, use a smartphone.
Two, complete the assignment in ten minutes.
Three, set the smartphone timer and shoot a photo a minute.
Four, tell a story about the morning in ten frames.
The shoot:
The end:
Assignment completed. We went back to block building and baby bouncing. Without assignments or deadlines, I get little accomplished during the day. What about you, do you like using photo assignments/prompts in your regular practice?