The Importance of Personal Projects

We all love to be busy working on various launch campaigns and social media content for brands, and I’m sure every other photographer like me cannot wait to share that work in their portfolios. Some of my current favourites:

But when we work to a brief and only share that work to our peers and potential clients, are we really showing the world what we’re all about? 

This is why I shoot a lot of personal work and aim to share those projects a bit more over the client ones. Why? Let me explain.

When I shoot personal work, 99% of the time I am not working to a brief or a strict shoot plan. I give myself a subject, perhaps a theme, and book in the studio time. There’s rarely a plan, it’s just me, the product and everything in the studio at my disposal. Now I’m not saying that I don’t work to a brief or won’t, that’s certainly not the case. It’s an essential part of any photoshoot and something I ask to see at the beginning of any production. I have a post on why a brief is essential coming up soon so be sure to check that. I’ll link it here when it’s up.

So why don’t I give myself a brief for personal projects? I am effectively sending my creative brain to the gym for a good workout! It’s a workout that trains essential muscles required to do what clients come to me for, but it also relaxes the mind.

It’s in these sessions that I explore new ideas, let my mind do what gets it going, and what makes it excited about creating. All of that is healthy. 

It’s good for us and aids us to think of the best ideas for clients when the briefs come in.

Some of my most recent pieces of work have been quite different to the style of work that is my known style. These may make an appearance on my Instagram, but then again they may not. They may be kept back as developmental pieces or put on pages, such as this blog, or become blueprints for a new series in my commercial-style. Even just writing that makes me excited about it!

It’s all part of giving my mind a healthy dose of creative exercise, developing my skills further to shoot in new ways, create new methods to work even quicker, develop ideas to problem solve any sceneros that may happen in the future, and also just for recharge the creative soul. 

Photography is my hobby as well as my job, and I still kick myself sometimes that this is what I have built up. Product and still life has been my niche since I started to find my creative interests in school, but I love all genres and experiment in all sorts. I’ve spent about fifteen minutes trying to write how it all makes me feel but nothing can really describe it!

The hobby and work sides of the passion have to work in harmony with eachother to keep everything happy. 

This is why early last year I started a second Instagram account @KatieHoweySnaps, which kind of feels like what my old Flickr account used to be when I first started to share my work online in 2007/8, and what my previous blog post was about. I’m sharing photos for the love of it all. If you decide to follow that account too, do let me know you got there from here. It’s nice to know someone has read my words :)

Katie