Being able to focus on one smaller part of a larger whole is a key skill when you’re writing vignettes. Today’s assignment will help you to see (literally!) how narrowing your focus to a small part of the entire experience makes for more interesting journaling. Ready? Go get your camera!
For today’s assignment, you’ll be doing the steps in the Vignette Journaling process, only with your camera. If you have a film camera, plan on taking about 7-10 pictures. If you’re using digital, take as many as you want! Here’ s what you do:
Pick your topic: an inanimate object or a space in or around where you live.
Think. Spend a few minutes looking at the object and considering what angles you could photograph it from.
Start snapping. First, stand about 10-15 feet away from the object and photograph it. Then take a step forward and take another picture. Continue doing this until you are as close to the object as your camera will let you get. Don’t be afraid to use unusual perspectives; you could lie underneath your object, or stand on a stool above it, for example. Try to capture the essence of the object, the quality that makes it special.
Develop or download the pictures.
Look and learn. Which pictures are visually the most interesting? Why? Notice how, in the photos you took from farther away, it’s hard to know exactly what to focus on. But as you move closer and closer, you find the “point” of the photo.
This assignment is one of my go-to processes when I’m feeling creatively frustrated. The shift in perspective from scrapbooking or writing to taking pictures never fails to both unlock my creative block and to teach me something new. When I followed the process this time, I learned something new about focus that I hadn’t thought of in the same way before.
The topic I picked to photograph was my rosebush. For my first photo I stood at an angle with the sun behind me. The results are flat, boring, and focusless. There isn’t any drama.
So for my second photo, I both got closer and I shifted where I stood in relation to the sun. In this photo, the sun was at my right shoulder. It’s still just an unremarkable photo of a rosebush, but at least the light is better.
Next I moved so that the sun was in front of me and I finally started to get a creative spark for what I might do.
I got closer and focused on something specific:
(I love how the spider web lines draw your eyes right to the tip of the bud.)
But then I looked up and I saw this: which was just about perfect, until I got even closer:
I love how the angle, light, and perspective combine to make the roses seem otherworldly and nearly alien, like some strange sort of umbrella.
While the angle and perspective are important, the thing that makes this photo dramatic—makes it make me want to create metaphor—is the direction of the light. That made me think about “light” in the pieces I write. Think of light as the uniqueness that you can bring to a topic. Writing just like everyone else (or standing like a normal person might, slightly bent over to photograph a rose, as opposed to the odd and neck-cricking pose I took to get that photo, not to mention the scrapes on my cheeks from the thorns) will result in your words feeling generic. Bring yourself to the project—your light—and you’ll find everything you know working together to make something unexpected.
Let me know what you learn from this assignment!
