The Art of the Personal Project

It’s not business, it’s personal.

I’ve been looking for a way to say thank you to Art + Math’s benefactors, the paying subscribers who keep the lights on and the coffee flowing. What I’ve come up with is this: the first premium, paywalled writing in the newsletter. It’s the initial offering in what I plan to be an ongoing series about personal projects and their importance in the creative wellbeing of the working photographer. These premium posts will be published between the regular posts—in addition, not in lieu of. I’ll continue to make Art + Math free for everyone (or, to borrow a phrase, “dedicated to art and free to all.”) Without further ado, please enjoy this entree with the added bonus of a late paywall.

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For Love or Money

Are you currently working on a “personal project”? We commercial photographers, and presumably my photojournalist and wedding photographer colleagues too, always seem to have some passion project in the works, or at least under consideration. 

In the best case we’re doing more than mulling over such projects, we’re actively doing the work. It’s easier said than done, of course, but also maybe not as hard as we I sometimes make it out to be. We I overthink, as if planning every last detail before shooting a single frame is going to guarantee success. The reasons to procrastinate are plenty: analysis paralysis, tired after a long day, unsure of the idea… There are lots of reasons not to, but it’s important to stop thinking about our personal projects and start getting to work doing them.  

Young me had creative energy for days. Middle-aged me now possesses the firsthand knowledge that creative energy is elusive, a combination of mental and physical energy, plus a bit of magic. The magic may seem most rare, but in truth it’s the mind and body stuff that’s the sticking point. Between the 9-to-5 and the “having a family” thing, it can be hard to find the time. In fact, I’d say if we’re counting on “finding” it, it’s never going to happen. We have to make the time. Which, for me at least, is easier said than done. 

I think those photographers working in fine art have it best, because their daily work (ideally) is a personal project. Perhaps we assignment photographers can think of our passion projects as brief ventures into the world of making art for art’s sake. Actually, the more I think about it, that’s really what it is. We go from mercenaries by day to artists by night.

Whether it’s your full-time gig or the thing for which you carve out time, the personal project is essential if a photographer hopes to avoid burnout and keep the fire of creativity burning. I speak from experience.

When photography pays the bills, it’s easy to become venal with the work. There are assistants to pay and lights to repair and lenses to buy and a studio to heat—not to mention groceries to buy and rent to pay. All of this requires ever-increasing sums of money, earned from a clientele in possession of ever-shrinking budgets, and so it’s easy to find yourself spending time targeting the work that pays the best rather than the work that is most gratifying. For gratification, we turn to the personal.

Which brings me the perfect opportunity to share my favorite diagram. When I taught “commercial applications in photography” I started every semester by hanging this poster on the studio wall. It’s the ideal place to be in your photography career, where what you want to shoot and what you can get paid to shoot overlap. 

I can only speak for myself, but from what I gather this is true for most of my friends and colleagues as well. Working on personal projects—making space to shoot things you want to shoot, to document stories of personal importance, to create not for profit but for passion—is critical to the care and feeding of our artistic selves. Ignore the desire to create at your own peril. Abstain for too long and you may find yourself stagnant, the creative spirit withering, drying up, blowing away. 

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A Project of My Own

Do you know what LARP is? It’s an acronym for Live Action Role Playing. LARP can be interpreted a number of different ways, but as I’ve experienced it, LARPers dress up in medieval fantasy costumes (typically of their own making) and compete in skill games, faux combat, and generally role-play as someone else for the weekend. It’s part theater, part fantasy, and mostly an excuse to get together with friends in the park. 

Brodrin Fellhammer (Shane)

Several years ago, long before Game of Thrones, I learned about LARPing and decided it might make for a worthwhile subject of study. I had recently begun focusing my commercial work on portraiture and thought it might be interesting to incorporate studio-style lighting and formalize the portraits I’d make of these LARPers, allowing me in the process to create one of my favorite things, juxtaposition. In this case it’s serious portraits of people goofing off in the park.

Anteries (Doug), Gearexx (Brett), Bones (Mike)

I was teaching a night class in studio photography at the time when I overheard a student talking about how she’d spent the weekend working on chainmail. That piqued my interest, so I inquired and after a bit of Q&A was invited to join her group the following weekend.

Zane Lightfoot (Steve)

I had no idea what to expect. But what I found upon arrival was a bunch of people having the time of their lives. Genuinely, after a handful of visits over the course of a couple years, I left every time feeling envious of the fun they were having.