Editor's note: The 2026 class of my Lightroom Classic Secrets course is open for enrollment now. Learn the tips, techniques and secrets used by the Lightroom masters. Click here for the details. Thanks for reading, Andrew.
The more I think about my own creative process the more I appreciate the power of small photography projects. If you find the thought of coming up ideas for photography projects daunting, then you may be thinking too big. The key is to think smaller instead.
But what makes something a project, rather than wandering around with your camera making photos of whatever catches your eye? Before we get on to the creative exercise itself (you can scroll to the bottom for that) let’s look at the characteristics of a photo project.
A project has a goal. There’s something you want to achieve. It might be testing out a new lens. It could be as simple as making two or three good photos of flowers in your garden.
A project forces you to be selective. When you’re doing a project, you don’t take photos of everything. You ask yourself whether it fits your project. That doesn’t mean you ignore good photo opportunities if they come along. But you stay focused on your goal. You bring your creative powers to bear on the problem you’re trying to solve.
A project has an end point. You know when it’s done and when you’ve achieved your goal.
A project has an accessible subject. A project making street portraits of people in Timbuktu is a great project if you live in Timbuktu. But if you don’t live in Mali (or plan to travel there) it’s not a project. It’s a dream.
A project challenges, intrigues or excites you. You don’t need a grand motivation, just a subtle push that gets you started, like trying a new technique or going outside to enjoy a sunny day.
A project produces photos that look as if they belong together. A project is like a magazine article. Imagine you’ve been commissioned to make a series of five or six photos for a magazine on your chosen subject. If you were looking at somebody else’s photos, what would you want to see? What would a photo editor want?
The answer is a cohesive set of photos that look as if they belong together and were made by the same photographer. The shooting and developing styles should be similar. The challenge is to achieve that while creating a variety of photos.
A project results in something tangible. It could be in digital form, like a gallery on a portfolio website. Or it could be physical, like making prints or zines. This is about reward for effort, as well as the craft aspect of photography.
What is a small photography project?
Now we have a definition of a photography project, what makes a small photography project? How small can it be?
The answer is as small as you like. If you go out for an afternoon to make photos of flowers, then turn it into a small photography project. Set yourself a simple goal, and accompany it with some restrictions to keep you focused. For example, you were making photos of flowers you could:
- Shoot all the photos with the same lens.
- Shoot all the photos in shade. This keeps the lighting simple and stops you wasting time shooting flowers in direct sun.
- Set yourself a goal of creating a set of six photos that look as if they belong together.
Treating it as a small project is a way of keeping you focused on your goal. It’s also a good way of avoiding distractions. Sure, the moss on that rock may make an interesting pattern. Go shoot it if you want. But when you’re done, come back to the flowers.
Small photography project examples
Let me give you some examples of small projects that I’ve undertaken this year.
Small photography project #1: Uncurling ferns
The first is from a garden I visited in early spring. This wasn’t a preconceived idea. When I explored the garden I found some ferns. I realized that the uncurling fern fronds made an interesting subject. So I made a set of photos of them.
This example shows that small photography projects don’t have to be preconceived. I had a different goal on that day (see the next example), but I saw something interesting and worked with that as well.
It turned into a small photography project because I set myself the goal of making at least three interesting, but different, photos of ferns. It was a different approach than seeing a fern, making a photo, then moving on to the next thing that caught my eye. I found something unexpected yet interesting, and pursued it with purpose.
Small photography project #2: Tulips
This is the other small project I worked on in the same garden as the first example. I went there with the goal of making close-up photos of flowers. The garden had lots of beautiful tulips, so I made them the project’s subject.
These are interesting examples because they show how you can to more than one project on the same day. A project isn’t a restriction. It’s a way of concentrating your attention on a theme or a subject so you get a better result.
Having two or three small projects on the go helps you make more of the day. When I visit a garden I usually start with two project ideas. One is to use a wide-angle lens to make photos of the gardens. The second is to use another lens to make close-up photos of flowers. I make it work by spending time on one, then on the other. I also keep myself open to other possibilities, like the example above with the ferns.
Small photography project #3: Black and white infrared
The next project is an example of testing a technique. I was intrigued by the idea of photographing gardens in black and white using an infrared converted camera. So I made it a small photography project. You can see the results below.
Small photography project #4: Wide aperture
My final example project shows the result of using a 35mm lens (APS-C) set to f2 (the lens’s widest aperture). This project idea was driven by curiosity. I was intrigued to see what would happen if I set the lens to f2. Here are the results.
My goal was to learn more about the lens I was using, and to see if I could use the widest aperture effectively in composition.
Small photography projects and the big picture
I have three more useful ideas about small photography projects.
The first is that projects can help you make sense of photos you’ve already made. A project can be retrospective. In other words, you might see a theme or an idea that you were exploring in older photos, but didn’t realize at the time had project potential. You can turn it into a project after the fact by bringing the photos together and presenting them together. If the idea is good enough you can keep going with it.
I wrote more about that idea in last week’s article Creative Exercise: How To Get New Photography Ideas From Old Photos.
The next is that a project may be part of an overreaching larger project. Small photography projects have the power to be part of something bigger. They’re also a way of breaking a big project down into smaller, manageable ones.
The small photography projects I’ve shown you today are all part of a bigger project to photograph gardens. I have a tangible goal for this big project, which is to write a book about garden and flower photography (I’ll start working on it in early 2026).
The small projects also have tangible goals. The best photos will end up in galleries on my portfolio website. I’ll put together a set of zines and print them over the winter. I’ll make some inkjet prints.
The third is that thinking in projects aligns with using Collections to organize your photos. It doesn’t matter what software you use to manage your photos, but it’s helpful if it has a feature like Lightroom Classic’s Collections.
It’s difficult to think in projects and organize your photos if you save your photos in folders and use a photo browser like Adobe Bridge to view them. It’s better to use folders for saving photos and Collections to organize them. That lets you add the same photo to multiple Collections.
That’s exactly what I did with the photos in this article. I created a new Collection for each one, so I could add photos without disturbing the contents of other Collections.
I also created the layouts you see in Lightroom Classic’s Print module. I enjoy grouping photos together like this and playing around with layout and sequencing.
I hope these ideas about small photography projects are useful and intriguing. Let’s finish with the creative exercise:
Creative Exercise: Set yourself three small projects for 2026
Think about what you’d like to achieve and how you’re going to do it. They can be unrelated project ideas or part of a larger photography project.
Your ultimate goal should be to complete the projects, and use them to push on towards more small project ideas. Get started and build momentum. Don’t create obstacles for yourself. Make them small and easy to complete.
The Creative Photographer
My ebook The Creative Photographer explores seven ways that you can become a better photographer by focusing on the creative aspects of photography. Click the link to learn more or buy.
