Making a Photography Project, Step One: Having an Idea

Going from having no idea to having an idea is possibly the most difficult creative step, which is partly why I prefer to overcome it “first”. This is the area of photography, and maybe life in general, which presents the most stress, trial and error, anguish, and pain. From directionlessness to direction, no idea to idea, blank slate, empty page, however you want to look at it. 0 to 1 is a far greater step than 1-10, or even 1-100.

With photography its very easy to build aimless content and then shape it later, using it as the marble block then chipping away to reveal the figure. This is common for street photography especially I think, where years can be spent building up an archive which can then be curated down into a vision after the fact. This is a fine approach, although I think it is more suited to hobbyists – I think building an archive of bespoke images which fit into an initial vision right from the start, even when that initial vision is subject to change over time is better than working with no direction then picking up what you have and seeing what sticks. That said, I’m entirely open to looking back on my body of work from over the years and finding a thread I didn’t intent or notice to begin with, and piecing that particular puzzle together.

An idea is not dogma, even if you really believe in it to begin with. The reality of documentary work is that you are following a story, not the other way around. Refining an idea, seeing where it takes you and being open to the changes which will inevitably occur to your vision require a compression of ego, which is easy when you recognise that the work will benefit greatly without pressure to fit into your initial box.

However, to get to that point of refinement, you have to have the idea in the first place. “0 to 1” creativity is what so many guides, manuals, lectures, esoteric ideas try to grapple with. It’s where the role of the muse may come in, the spark of inspiration.

It certainly isn’t something anyone can simply hand you, at least not in a way that will feel right and fulfilling. Having the moment of realisation that actually you’ve really noticed something worth spending your time bringing into the world is as valuable as the work itself – perhaps why personal projects often feel so much more special than external assignments.

You have to be open to it, to noticing the potential in all areas of life to be elevated, translated through your process into something that reaches out beyond you to your audience, offering them something of the same feeling. Maybe you learn something new, or have an experience you want to recount. Maybe its a combination of something happening in the news and your past life experience. Maybe you just notice a certain shade of colour the leaves turn to between Spring and Autumn. A lightening bolt idea is great, but sometimes it’s small and subtle, a “huh” moment which takes you time to unpack and realise the consequences.

Truly the having of the idea itself is down entirely to how open you are to realising that there is potential everywhere, and that what catches your attention will probably catch someone else’s. Maybe it’s a person you nod to sometimes at the bus stop – what’s their story? Maybe there’s a nearby road which you’ve never walked down – why not? What are the houses like down in that area? Or maybe it’s your own front door, look at all the cracks in the paint, the way the sunlight strikes the lettering at different times of the year. Perhaps these only have an audience of one – but that isn’t what’s important at this stage, what matters is that you are actively receptive to the idea that not only can anything make for a lovely photograph, but they can be extended outwards into a narrative, a zine, a book, a life’s work.

The more projects you work on the easier it gets to take hold of a tiny sliver of potential and nurture it through all the other stages into something which stands on it’s own. I am currently working on about five long term projects, some of which arrived to me as fully formed ideas, others which developed out of other work I am doing, and some which started off as single random images which i looked at for a little while before realising how it might connect to a greater story.

D.C. Exclusion Zone came from watching the news unfold as the election results were announced in 2020, and feeling the energy of those ongoing conversations, realising that it would be a landmark event – and then allowing the nature of the work to change and adapt after the events of January 6th unfolded at the Capitol.

Meanwhile, Transiting Bulgaria came from the necessity of spending time in a city I would not have otherwise travelled to, a very basic collection of images I made on my daily walks around the city. The “idea” was nothing more complicated than “this is the situation I was in” – no plot twists or devastatingly groundbreaking images, but still enough for a publications worth.

Flames Cast No Shadows came from an observation made while working on a different story in Varanasi, that prayers left from one side of the Ganges and washed up on the other. Any story can be put simply, I don’t think it belittles the effort that goes into expanding and artistically presenting the idea. It does help to show that something might seem obvious, or easy to overlook/take for granted.

The first publication I was ever part of, BARDO: Summer of ’20 came from a mutual understanding of the significance of documenting that period of time, knowing that whatever we made would be part of a wider record of time during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For my project involving the work I’ve made at Stonehenge during the solstices it started as just an interest to be in the space in such a unique way, restricted throughout the year but over-compensatingly permissible for a select few days. After my first visit I thought it would be enough to make a project just covering those specific times, but after my second I realised the potential was far greater, and could include many other aspects of modern British occult practices, and a connection to ancient sites across the land.

Recognise the things that stay with you, and why. A combination of circumstances, framed in the right way, and presented with artistic flourish. That’s all any of this is. How many interesting things happen to you every week? Every month? When you get home at the end of the day what interaction stayed with you? Someone was rude to you at the local shops? Accidentally received the wrong coffee order? Found some money on the floor? Saw a cat with an interesting pattern?

It doesn’t need to be life changing. I think people wait for something perfect to fall into their lap, and if you are working hard enough this will happen eventually – but it takes picking up the smaller opportunities that present themselves and taking them as far as they will go to really recognise perfection when it arrives.

Otherwise what you tend to be waiting for are the conditions someone else got in their project which you saw and enjoyed. I haven’t spoken about being inspired by other existing work, because I think that is a different topic from having an idea. Having an idea because someone else had an idea is respectable and I recognise the influence everyone is likely to have on everyone else in a connected society where work has an audience, and that audience have their own audience, and so on. But having an idea from your daily life, from your own interests is in a way more interesting than being inspired by another artist. An artist may inspire many many people to go on and create their works, whereas your personal moment of introspection when you spot the right arrangement cracks in the pavement is much more personal, that’s just for you.

Any idea could be itself, or contribute towards a project. It’s for you to understand and recognise what they might represent, or how you might explore the story they might signify. The more I think about it, the less it is about even having an idea, because the actual idea is “hey, I should photograph/tell a story about that“. The trick is figuring out what “that” ought to be.

When I wrote the introduction for this series of articles I mentioned that I had started to work on a project which feels like it will be a good short-to-mid term documentary, with narrow scope and the ultimate destination of zine format presentation.

The idea came from a combination of active searching, and realisation. I was exploring my new local area, which meant meandering walks to points of interest identified on Google Maps. Included in these are a few local temples, all of which have their own draw and I’m sure about which many projects could flourish. However, it was the smallest of these that left me feeling like something more immediate would be possible, and worthwhile.

The main temple on the high street near the station is grand, with a shiny gold roof structure and impressive interior space across a few floors and basement. Another nearby is expansive, with a large car park, and plans to build further structures on the premises. I am sure I will make many photographs in these spaces, and that they will contribute to a wider documentation of Hinduism in the UK. A few streets away from me, between a laundrette and a estate agencies is a temple which fits right in among the nearby grocery shops and other high street amenities. You might overlook it entirely as being something like an office, the sign reads “centre” not “temple”. The mirrored front does not allow you to see inside, so you have to open the door and discover for yourself to an extent.

Compared to those other temples there is a lack of size, space and funding. The energy is very different in the space than most Hindu temples I have been in. I went inside and introduced myself, and spoke with the Swami who runs it for about half an hour. This is more time than I have spent with any other community leader in a comparable way. The lower footfall here meant he was able to give me the time, hear what I had to say, and give me some insight into where he saw himself in the area.

A few devotees came and left while I was there, and watching their interactions with the Swami and one another was interesting. There was a sense of the temple I am not sure I could put into words, but I knew it would make for a project in and of itself. Idid not make any photographs during that first visit, but I did on my second, and consecutive visits.

If I had not gone in and felt a certain way maybe it would not be a project. If the Swami had been different then maybe it wouldn’t be a project. If the room had been arranged a bit differently, or look different from the outside then maybe it wouldn’t be a project.

Yet everything was the way that it was, and it interested me enough to decide that I would spend some time documenting it as it’s own story, adjacent and attached to my wider look at British Hinduism, but still very much a standalone piece of work.

That’s all the project started as, the idea to spend a little longer and start to make some photographs of this space, and to see where it would go. You don’t yet need to have a message or overarching grand scheme, it doesn’t need to be detailed and deep, just interesting to you, something that made you pause. It’s just the idea, a thread to unravel, which may surprise you where it may end up leading. The work happens next.

In the next section of this series of articles I will talk about research and development, which I see as the next step in producing a project once you’ve had an idea.