When I think back to my photographic/artistic education the most productive year was my Art and Design foundation course at Wimbledon School of Art. It was a one year pre-degree course in which you spend the first 10 weeks doing 10 different projects in all different areas of art and design before choosing an area to specialise in for the rest of the year. I choose photography in the end but the course also gave me a taster of different areas such as fine art painting, 3D design and sculpture.
The whole year was a relentless pursuit of creativity and 15 years on I still haven’t experienced anything quite like it…….until I started my own 365 project.
Initially I wanted to create something closer to a daily photo project but it evolved into what is now PhotoCreative365
But how is a 365 a marketing campaign I hear you ask?
Your 365 project doesn’t have to last a whole year or even be a photo a day project. What is important is doing something creative everyday that showcases your talents and tunes your skills.
A good example if this is Rick Nunn’s 50 of 50 project from 2010 – 50 days, 50 photos with a 50mm lens
A daily 365 project might be ambitious and many are ultimately unfulfilled but it’s a great way to develop different skills. Projects that have involved photographing strangers is an exciting marketing strategy.
There are other benefits of daily photo projects and that is the already existing communities. Many of these communities exist in places like Flickr but there are sites like 365project.org which are worth a look. I’ve discovered and developed relationship with numerous other photographers who are part of these daily photo communities.
You daily project doesn’t have to be all photography either. You could start doing a daily blog post, tweet or Facebook post. Just think where you might want to focus more attention. For a few more ideas check out my article I wrote last year on Starting a 365 project
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Michael has been working as a photographer for the last ten years. In that time he has shot over 100,000 peoples’ portraits and worked in four different continents. In 2001 Michael graduated with a degree in photography from Manchester Metropolitan University.