I am looking for structured assignments which will help me improve my photography. I’m an experienced enthusiast - over 20 years of shooting - but I feel a bit stale recently like I’ve not learned anything new or looked at anything differently. Is there any assignment you have done which you felt moved the dial for you?
One camera, one prime lens for a year. Now I don’t even bother with a zoom.
Grab a photo from a photographer you like and replicate it exactly. Model, background, lighting, styling, postproduction, lens choice, cropping.
Literally try to make it so when you see the photos side to side it’s hard to distinguish them.
It’s hard but very fun and will force you to really master the technical aspects. It will change your future jobs forever.
52frames.com they give a new assignment weekly and give you a community to be a part of. Big rec from me.
The first time I had to shoot a job on pure JPEG, no editing. Had to bake in the exposure and white balance manually and nail it as the photos were going right to publishing straight out of camera.
I challenge anyone to go shoot full manual(including white balance) in JPEG and find how good of a photographer you actually are.
It’s not really fun to find out all the times you were “shooting for post” you were actually using RAW as a crutch to mask bad fundamentals(as I found out), but it’s a powerful lesson.
I remember seeing something a portrait photographer would give as an assignment. Basically you have to stand in a 3ft sq box, and your job is to take at least 150 portraits without leaving the box
Photographer’s Playbook has “assignments” from all sorts of professors and professionals.
Commercial photog here and one of the toughest assignments was first year shooting ‘black on black’. A small shoe sized box that was painted or gaff taped fully black then in studio shot at 3/4 angle to camera with some ‘down angle’ to see the top and using only one light. (one test was one light and using mirrors for bounce etc and another was using only a flashlight with a long exposure while painting the light)
The goal was to not have any side ‘merge’ with the black surrounding areas and light the edges in just enough fashion to showcase the shape without merge all the way around the box… absolute challenge and one that a few class mates and I still laugh at how hard it was but also showed just how much understanding light and how to use/manipulate it matters… this pertains to commercial product photography prob the most but the lesson apply to any object of any size. How can you show its dimension without allowing any one side to merge into the same tonal range and flatten the image.
For landscape the well lit foreground that separates from the middle ground and the background also does not merge with the other elements…. And on and on…
I will never not forget the critique of that assignment where any tiny amount of merge was pointed out.
It’s late here, can you guys upvote this or comment? So i can be reminded of it tomorrow and read you interesting suggestions!
Thank you! 🙏🏻
How about weekly prompts? I’ve learned plenty since starting a little over a year ago because every week is a new challenge prompt. 52frames.com is the site. It’s 100% free and full of non-toxic members/photographers willing to provide feedback and critiques.
Thanks, I’ll take a look
Second this! Really fun and helped me branch out of my comfort zone and experiment with new things.
Thanks for the rec. 👌
Go out and shoot somewhere you’ve shot before…but do it at a time that you never would normally. I shot my neighborhood at 4 in the morning and it was a totally different vibe and style than normal. Got one of my faves I’ve ever shot too.
Solo trips that you can dedicate yourself to shooting was game changing for me.
Following a 76 year old presidential candidate around every corner of America through a year long nation-wide campaign.
Portraits in studio. How to use a flash meter to setup the lights and how to direct a model. The most difficult part was directing the model.
Something I always think about from a class I had in college is to photograph the weather. Whether it be the seasons changing or the weather affecting the how people dress in relation to that or how storms/droughts play a part to the landscape.
Rain can result in really cool reflections at the right time of the day. Snow can create a beautiful canvas and how people interact with snow is fun.
Keeping an eye out on the weather is something my “photography” eye is always thinking about, and we always have weather!