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?
I found a lot of the early drill assignments in my high school photography class were really effective. I still find myself coming back to some of those lessons.
Lock yourself in the bathroom with a 50mm and don’t leave until you’ve taken 100 shots. - teaching how to work the scene, find something interesting in the mundane and the everyday.
Photograph the alphabet. - learn to see how things can look like other things, shooting with intention, learning about observing the world for how it can be made to look, not for how it is.
Photograph a series of symmetrical shots, asymmetrical shots, pure texture shots, silhouette shots. - learn to make your photo about one primary element. Is it about shape? light? subject? texture? pick only one and run with it.
Tell a story with a photo. - I always sucked at this one. But this makes a picture worth looking at instead of being some stock photo.
number 5 probably doesn’t matter so much any more, but: Push your T-max 400 to 1600 to open up a new world of low-light shooting.