Extraordinary Everyday Photography by Brenda Tharp and Jed Manwaring

There were a mix of categories of notes here.

Finding Ideas for Photography Around You

• Schedule photography playdates with yourself each week to go somewhere near your home and see what you can find.
• Look inside of your house, how do the items in your kitchen look? The books on your shelf?
• Walk around your neighborhood, even if you think there’s “nothing to photograph” there.
• Choose a place nearby that you haven’t photographed before and go there.
• Force yourself to take a large number of images within a small radius, like making 30 within a city block.
• Put your camera on auto to focus on finding interesting subjects, instead of fiddling with the settings.
• Visit places that typically have a lot of interesting images to be made, like farmers’ markets, festivals, and busy streets.

Prompts for Noticing More Images

• Are there repeating items, like crops or bikes?
• Are there interesting reflections anywhere?
• How about shadows?
• What about interesting patterns, shapes, textures, or strong lines?
• Are there any interesting contrasts of color, size, or brightness?
• Is there some juxtaposition you can focus on, like an old man and a young girl, or someone in a suit and a hippy?
• Can you find a particularly interesting object to study and make a good image of?
• How about something humorous?
• See if there are any demonstrations of man against nature.
• Faces are always an interesting option.

Ideas for Expanding the Creative Process

• Try putting your photos in black and white. It doesn’t have to be high contrast light, but you need a range of tones so that everything stands out.
• Create a wider view by taking panoramas.
• Pan your camera, moving it with a moving subject or moving it against a still subject. This is great for catching motion, like a dog running or someone catching a bus.
• Use artistic filters like you find in Photoshop or Instagram.
• Try interesting new lenses, like the ones by Lensbaby.
• Create deliberate blur by putting the subjects out of focus.