Cottage, Academy Street
Photograph looking for a project
Last week I introduced you to “Portals and Passages,” the LTP I have been working on for several decades without realizing it. Just before posting time I changed a word or two. I changed “finished” to “reaching a milestone.” My LTP will end when I stop photographing or the world does away with doors. The former will occur long before the latter. How do we approach the LTP that appears to be huge and endless?
I have come to think of the LTP as a serialized novel. Completing a chapter is an accomplishment that can motivate you to move on to the next chapter, or maybe a different project. Breaking the LTP down into smaller tasks helps because completion gives you a sense of achievement and accomplishment. Starting the next chapter with recent success on your mind makes starting another project much easier.
Another LTP is photographing Academy Street in Cary, North Carolina. Should you go to my web site (and I hope you do), the various chapters of the LTP of Academy Street (from newest to oldest) are:
A Winter Day and a Summer Morning
Victorian Lady
Southern Gothic
Transformation: The Cary Arts Center (A time lapse web project)
An Icon Transformed: The Metamorphosis of an Old Cary School into a New Arts Center
A Change of Pace
Academy Street
I have two more Chapters of the Academy Street LTP in various stages of completion. One has a working title of “Inside Straight” because it’s a collection of images roaming around inside my head looking for a unifying thread. The other has a working title of “After the Memories,” a re-photographic project showing changes on Academy Street over a thirty year period. This chapter is close to being finished.
In short, you probably won’t finish an LTP because the inspiration is a life-long love affair with a subject that you cannot stop photographing. If you have such a project, hooray for you, don’t stop photographing. In the meantime, think of writing chapters and sharing it with the rest of us as soon as you complete it.
Work never shared is unfinished work.
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