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Photograph People in Public Places Using ICM
A Theme-Based Prompt
Text and Photos by Stephanie Johnson
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“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
~ Marcel Proust (1871-1922) ~
French Novelist and Essayist
Some ideas to get you going with photographing people in public places using ICM.
- Do you have access to a public park or a big city downtown area? A museum or a zoo, perhaps? Visit any public places you have access to and photograph the people you find there using ICM.
- Explore the vibrancy of color and energy of the people in the scene with your camera movement.
- Experiment with a wide array of movements and focal lengths to create whimsical images of the essence of people in these places?
- Not used to holding the camera vertically? Push the boundaries a bit. Play and have fun creating vertically-oriented images for a change.
- Make images that speak to the activities and vibes you feel in the public places you choose to photograph in.
How did you feel waving the camera around in a public environment? Were you self-conscious about it, and if so, did that hold you back from being fully open and creative with your camera movement? Did you allow yourself to have fun and be playful? How did all of this come together to inform the resulting images?
Writing is a spiritual practice in that people that have no spiritual path can undertake it and, as they write, they begin to wake up to a larger connection. After a while, people tend to find that there is some muse that they are connecting to.
Journal about your experience.
- What were your thoughts and feelings in the moment? Were you able to get into a creative zone and just be present, even with a lot of other people around?
- We always encourage you to write about your experiences in conjunction with your image making. Writing as part of the creative process can really open you up to what is behind the images you are creating. This helps you discover and understand the ‘why’ behind your creative work.
- Allow your thoughts, feelings, and emotions to flow through your writing as a way to connect your image making more deeply to your experiences in the moment.
- Journaling can be a sort of meditative or mindful act, and no one needs to see your musings other than yourself, so allow the words to just spill out onto the page.
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