“Turns out the stuff that makes you happy is mostly everyday and boring.” – Hugh MacLeod
My bio says that I use photography as an excuse for adventure. But lately, being boring is far more attractive to me.
It could be getting older, becoming a parent, priorities shifting, all that. Anymore, I feel like simply photographing what I see, around the house, or on a walk, is plenty satisfying.
I look back at my early landscape photography, and all the abandoned work I did, and I recognize the “adventure” involved in making those pictures. Part of me misses that phase of my photography – the hunger to wake up early on a foggy morning and watch the sunrise, making lovely images all the while.
When I get the chance, I still do that kind of stuff. But I don’t actively seek it out anymore. I’m becoming boring.
I still have my portrait projects, and the kids are always great photo subjects. I work on the occasional family portrait session. It’s just that the adventure stuff has taken a backseat.
That’s the great part about photography as a hobby: I don’t have to feel guilt about settling into a groove.
Wrapping up my latest project, I thought about what kickstarted the whole thing.
It was the film. Lomography advertised a new, limited-run film stock that you had to buy in bulk – 10 boxes an order. That got my brain, and my math, going: 10 boxes of 36 exposure film equals about a year’s worth of shots, if you took one shot per day.
Boom. A project.
Sometimes we don’t need grand ideas for personal projects. Sometimes it’s the gear that sparks an idea.
Grab a cheap-o camera and see what kind of project you can make out of it. Take a simple piece of equipment – a vintage lens, or twin-lens reflex camera – and see where it leads you.
For two months now, I’ve been logging my daily activities, organizing my tasks, and laying out my appointments and meetings in this handy journal, using a no-frills approach to the Bullet Journal philosophy. Basically, I took what I was doing using Things and paper lists and combining that workflow into one canonical place: a notebook.
The basic idea is that you write your task list and appointments down on paper, month by month. Whatever you don’t get done each month transfers to the next month. Along the way, you make decisions about those tasks – like, should they even be in there?
From there, you use an index system at the front of the notebook to keep tabs on the various months, task lists, projects, and reference lists you keep in the journal. And then it’s up to you to add whatever system you want on top of that basic outline.
I’m still in the very early stages of using this system, but already I’ve noticed a few things:
If I need to do or remember something, I have one place to put it now. Before, I was using paper, my phone, or nothing.
If I have a task to do, having a reference to look at has been super helpful. “What can I do right now?” Check the journal, and it’s there. I am finding I’m actually getting more done.
There’s a bit of personality involved – such as noting the first time we went to the ice cream shop, or writing down a memorable moment in the daily log. It’s a journal in the truest sense.
You can get crazy with pictures and taxonomies and ink colors, but I’m keeping it simple, or putting in a splash of color when I feel like it. No pressure to do either, because it’s mine, and only I look at it.
I’m logging my fitness goals in the journal, and boy – it’s a real sense of accomplishment to see my commitment on paper.
Other digital systems have never quite stuck with me, whether those systems involve an app (Things), a device (my iPhone), or notes (Apple Notes, Simplenote, etc.). Maybe all I needed was a notebook and a pen.
I’m still living the Getting Things Done® lifestyle, with projects and weekly reviews and all that. The journal keeps all that in one spot, and gives me direct, immediate feedback on how I’m doing. At the minimum, the system requires a monthly review.
The combo of iOS Reminders, my Apple Calendar (on Mac and iOS), and the Bullet Journal has been key with appointments, meetings, birthdays, etc. Writing down an event on paper is fine, but I still need my phone to buzz and remind me of upcoming dates.
Photography-related: I have a whole @Photos project in here with to-do items, lists of ideas, and potential blog posts. Again, it’s an on-paper reference – one canonical source for photography stuff.
Habits are hard to establish. I feel like GTD has been an easy at-work habit, but maybe not such an easy life habit. With this journal system, I may finally have the platform to get things done in all areas of my life.
So this week, like every month this past year, we’ll set her up in a little photo shoot, and take a bunch of pictures. Every month is labelled with a little sticker we put on her. Doing this, we have 12 portraits of our baby through the year.
At the minimum, 12 good photos of your baby in a year is pretty good. I shoot a bunch more of her, but I know that each month we at at least get one, and we make it a ritual: change her outfit, the backdrop, put props in, that kind of thing.
The fun part? Going through and seeing the photos sequentially, from the start. There’s our Riley, one year ago, with a hint of who she would be 12 months later. There’s the first time she sat up on her own. There’s the one with the drool…
I’d like to say we kept our ritual going with the other two kids after they passed 12 months. But babies really are easier to pose, and goodness knows I take plenty of the other two doing their kid things. It’s fine. At least we have those first 12 months.
“There are too many awards and prizes for any of them to make sense any longer, yet people still have their eyes fixed on them,” says Jörg M. Colberg. So what makes a successful photo?
It’s not where it appears, or how many awards it earns, Colberg argues. Success is derived from intent – in achieving a goal.
I know it’s easy to fall into the awards abyss, especially the seeking. I used to love it when a random Tumblr photo blog would feature my stuff. It felt like worthwhile recognition, when really it meant nothing. Another photo would replace it in the blog stream, and the handful of people who saw it wouldn’t think much of it. Rinse, repeat.
What did matter to me was earning recognition from a body of work. That took effort, doing research, talking to subjects, planning out the project, thinking about my audience, and pounding the pavement to get the word out. The project was more than a group of photos with a goal – it was the whole workload.
We see “award-winning photographer” enough, don’t we? How about “completed successful project that mattered photographer?”
I can only make a list like this by actually trying out these types of photography. That means experimenting, testing, doing something over and over again to see if it catches.
It also means stumbling into something, with no warning or preparation, and loving it by chance. My light and shadow stuff developed slowly, over time, and only by looking back and seeing a theme did I realize the kind of work I wanted to make.
Finding your likes may mean finding your dislikes as well.
I haven’t done this in a while: tromp around outside on a snowy morning (in April!) and take some sunrise photos.
It’s one of the benefits of the new job. I now have some time to stop and make pictures, and this week I realized how much I missed that.
As soon as I saw the sun rising in the backyard, and the light catching the snow crystals, I knew I had to grab the macro lens and get out there.
Maybe it’s a good practice to schedule these types of things. Or maybe it’s good enough to have some time in your schedule to let serendipity happen. Maybe, as Forest Gump says, it’s a bit of both.
