Tip: make a project scrapbook

Saturday 21 November 2020, 20:02 by Elvira Smit | 4,841 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Photography is mostly a digital activity: I press a button, connect my camera to my laptop and click around with my mouse in Lightroom.

This way of working only engages my creativity in one way. And that's a shame. So I started a project scrapbook, and it works a treat.

Producing in waves

By now, I know that my photographic output comes in waves. And right now I'm exactly on such a wave: I'm delving into my subject and taking lots of photographs.

That subject, the urban landscape, is still far too broad, though. So I zoom in on what interests me about certain urban places right now. It helps me explore other angles too, such as books.

Thinking around your subject

When you're working on a photo series, project, report or whatever you want to call it, it helps to look at your subject from all sides. So not just through your camera's viewfinder. But through books, magazines and snippets of conversations that connect to your subject.

I collect all those separate elements in my scrapbook. I stick in anything that has even the slightest connection to my subject. That's how I think around my subject.

Alongside this 'external inspiration', I also stick in my own work.

After every photo outing, I print the photographs that might contain something. I stick those in my scrapbook. I also add notes: about what I like in the photograph, and what I don't. That forces me to really look at the images I make, and to look for a long time.

What it gives me

All that fiddling keeps my brain constantly 'switched on' to my subject. It's as if a dedicated little gnome lets all the incoming information pass through its hands, asking 'does this belong in the scrapbook?'

I get more and more ideas and my thinking becomes increasingly associative. I now explore a few of those ideas each time, until one of them sticks. The scrapbook also makes that process very visual and tangible. So I feel that something is happening, that I'm making progress. That motivates me enormously to carry on.

For those without a theme

For anyone who also enjoys sticking things in but doesn't have a theme (yet): make an inspiration scrapbook. That lets you explore which themes interest you.

I made such a scrapbook at the end of last year, and I also wrote about it then.

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