Idea books

Next week starts my next group of flash photography students and one of the things that I tell all my students is that they need to create an idea book.  In a nutshell, an idea book is a collection of your own images that you have put together along with information on how you photographed them. It is one of the best long term learning aides that I have ever discovered.

The concept of the idea book is to create a collection of your own images that you can use to spark your creativity and as a source of images that you can build and improve upon.  So how does this idea book work?

Building and idea book.

1. Find yourself an album that can hold 4x6 prints.  The large the album, the better.
2. Get a bunch of 4x6 index cards

When you take an image that you like, make a 4x6 print of it and put it in the album.  Write down every detail of how you photographed the image; lighting, exposure, location, time of day etc.  Even if the image isn't perfect, but you like the concept, put it in the book. As you get more and more images in the book, you will be building a source of ideas that can trigger your memory.  It will also help you become a better photographer because you can go back to an image you like and work on it and make it better.

Its awesome.  Many photographers on the lecture circuit sell there idea books.  If you want, you can pick one or two of these up as starting points, but ultimately you need to be the one taking the images or you will never understand how they were created.