Hello everyone. I’ve been working on giving you ideas of photography projects that you can take on that don’t involved spending a ton on special gear and that you can do with that you have.

This time I want to introduce the Time After Time Project. It’s very simple but has a long duration.

It definitely requires planning in advance and a commitment to stick with things. Your end result could be an Express presentation, a slide show, a collage or some kind of montage.

The Idea

To do this project, you need to choose a subject, and a location that is going to be around for a while. Consider the idea of a farm with a barn and a farmhouse. Barring being sucked up by some farming conglomerate, your subject matter is likely to stick around. You could choose a railway station, a roadway, a field, or a landscape. The choice needs to be available for the duration of the project, at minimum six months, longer if your location does not have obvious seasons.

The Practice

Once you have identified your subject, you pick a time of day and usually a day of the week to go make an image. It doesn’t always have to be the same day of the week but the time of day could be consistent to get the sense of light at a time. Or you could shoot at different times of the day for a potentially wider variance in your images. You’re the artist, you choose.

What you will do is go to your subject location at the day and time, once per week and make an image. You do this regardless of the light and the weather. Try to use the same angle of view for each image, because Time After Time’s intent is to show a progression of changes over an extended period. If you have seasons without a lot of change, maybe go every two weeks, but go for a longer total time, perhaps a year instead of six months.

You want to place your camera in as close to the same position for every shot. Maintain consistency in depth of field and ISO, so you may find that a tripod makes things simpler.

Make a few images and you are done for the shoot. Try to avoid editing the images each time you shoot, you will have to do what is called a flow edit at the end anyway, and if you edit every image, odds are good that you will have very inconsistent flow.

Store your images in their own folder or collection, whatever means that you use, but be CERTAIN that the date and time settings are correct in your camera whenever you go to make images. You need this to be able to put the images in time order from oldest to newest for your final presentation.

The Outcome

Most folks who undertake this kind of project come away really surprised at the end because it reveals how much some things change and how much others do not. It’s not a hard exercise, in fact it’s really easy, the challenge is your discipline to stick with it.

Wrapping Up

Are you on board? Do you have the will to do this project? Are you ready to learn what you see and what you do not see? This results in an interesting final but is also an incredible learning tool. If you are comfortable with, or committed to Street Photography, that subject model is incredibly informative as an example.

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