Running a business can squeeze the life out of a creative endeavour. That’s one of the reasons so many photographers have personal projects in addition to the work they do for clients. If you’re lucky enough sometimes these will coincide. Most often not, and that can also be a great thing.
A personal project frees you up to fill your own brief. You can take risks and learn new techniques and approaches without running the risk that you will disappoint someone. And when you disappoint yourself there’s just a new growth opportunity.
My personal project for 2020 was creating and publishing my first book. It is called The Uncommon Cold: A dog’s perspective and it maps out all the craziness that we experienced between March and July 2020 as COVID-19 spread across the globe.
Alongside the learning journey of researching, crafting and publishing a book it was very exciting to be be awarded Best Research Book in the Advanced Diploma class alongside architectural and macro photography extraordinaire and all round ‘amazeballs’ photographer Dijana Jovanovic.
(The spelling of my name on the book cover is correct, the one of the award certificate not so much).
In Perth, Western Australia we weathered the corona storm in 2020 so amazingly well. That’s not to say things may not change in an instant in 2021, but we’re continuing to sit, stay and wash our paws.
I’ll be writing a post about each of the images in the book, partly as a personal memory jog and partly to assure people that I don’t knock someone over in a shopping centre car park to steal enough toilet rolls for the cover photo. I do hope these comments and insights make you laugh. In times like these it is important to find some humour in the darkness.
Copies of the book are available to order online.
What a great way to turn a sour situation into something great. Congrats on publishing your book.
Thanks so much – it really kept me grounded and was great fun to do.
How fun! Glad you kept busy with such a rewarding project!