Organising/recurring themes

elven

I decided a while ago to try and organise my flickr collection into something more intuitive than just sets for various outings. I started thinking about how to group my shots by a style or theme, and it was actually quite an interesting and revealing process.

I think we generally forget about most of the shots we’ve taken over the months/years and it can be quite helpful to establish if you have any subconscious recurring themes appearing in your pictures, since you might notice that you shoot a lot of either a particular subject, or lots of subjects but in a particular style, without realising. Stopping to consider this might give you ideas for projects to try developing further, or it might even make you think about what you’re happiest with, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what direction you might want to go in from here.

Just another one of those things that some people will appreciate, and inevitably others will think “what’s the point?”… if you don’t see the point in it, you’re absolutely free to ignore this post completely

If you’re curious, I went with sets of:

Warm
Sombre
Green
Blue
Contrast
Minimal
Gothic – this one was my surprise, when I realised just how many dark and brooding pictures I had when I look at them all together.
Scapes
Nature macro
Random slices – I have a lot of in betweeny pictures that aren’t macro, but aren’t landscapes, they are something, well, in between.
I Love Trees! – well, no surprise there anyway…

Calina

Depends on how many photographs you have to organise. At last count I had more than 4000. So I group photographs into sets and then have collections as well.

pete4130

Elven,

I think its a good idea for sure. You can see how your progressing, see how your images are developing into different themes and give you ideas how to elaborate on them and structure them more. I know hats happened to me when I've been shooting. You see a small pattern occuring and then decide to go in that direction for to see what you can produce.
Sometime it can be hard to strictly catgorise them don't you think? some images may not fit specifically into one theme or idea but I guess thats down to editing.
Over the years I did notice I had a tendency to shoot very similar subjects with a certain stlye. Once I noticed this I made a point not to to this as often so I would have to keep thinking of new things to shoot and different ways to shoot subjects I'd shot in the past. I can be quite militant with this to the point where I find myself refusing to shoot photos that I feel are very similar to photo's I'd shot in the past. Sometimes I'd feel like I had photogrpahers block (similar to writers block?) but I think it's helped me to be personally more imaginative and creative with the photos I took.

Sorry for waffling. Like I said I really do think the theme based sets are a good idea for seeing themes developing subconsciously and that it can allow you to see ideas you might not have thought about exploring more.

Pete.