50 Things One Shot

Photographed on 8/26/2022-8/29/2022

Published on 3/12/2023

Following up the "One Thing" photo assignment for my photograhy class, my professor told us to do the inverse; take one picture of fifty things. Inspired by the work I did for the first assignment, I was excited to play around with different objects and lighting. I did not realize how daunting of a task it would be until I ran out of things to take interesting pictures of about 25 photos in.

Unlike the previous assignment which invited me to imagine many different ways of looking at one object, this assignment forced me to consider literally fifty times the amount of situations and objects. I found myself struggling and procrastinating with this challenge quite a lot.

Like many assignments for the photography class, I started by looking around my apartment for different objects I liked or saw a lot in my daily life. I scanned each room, picking up and placing objects in different positions and lighting until I exhausted everything I could possibly think of. I even resorted to taking quick snapshots of our drink coasters. Unsurprisingly, they did not turn out well.

Frustrated by the lack of fifty unique objects in our apartment, I resolved to set out on a walk on the nearby nature trail the weekend before the due date to see if something would reveal itself to me. I did take some okay pictures of my glasses and shoes next to a peaceful stream, but was unimpressed with the composition when compared to some of the apartment photos.

Eventually I got my fifty photos, but as evidenced by the mere ten I selected, I was not overly proud of my work here. This assignment taught me a valuable lesson: you cannot simply take a snapshot of any object and expect it to come out looking good. The composition must come first, and if you aren't framing your objects in a visually engaging way, they aren't worth anyone's time.

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