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Do you have photo projects which you work towards, or do you find yourself just taking whatever grabs your fancy?
If so - what's your current one?
Do you find they help in anyway?
Do they give you focus when you go out, or do they limit your shooting?
When you complete a project, what do you do with it?
Aim for publication in the mags,
Put them in a book,
Store them away on your HD never to be seen again?
Bore people with slideshows 
I am currently working on a "10 year" photo album. I have been scanning old photographs, retouching in CS3, and then dragging lots of shots from various HD.
I think I will use Blurb to produce the photo book.
It's been fun scanning and looking at all the old photographs, but can be a bit tedious pressing that "SCAN" button.
Mark
Ive been thinking of doing another – they tend to focus my photography rather than limit it. I like them in a similar way to competitions as they can make you think outside of your normal comfort zones and style.
My fav project photographer on here is sludden but he’s not posted for a long long time 
I have been thinking of re-shooting my a-z series as I think I can improve on it now with the hope of publication and a private book (now that I have discovered the joys of self publishing) But the last set is sat on a DVD somewhere I did say at the time I was going to submit it but I never got around to it.
Up till the middle of last year I was pretty much going out and seeing what I could find on a night - driving all around west yorks and into manchester in search of "stuff" to take photos of.
Great whilst you're still discovering new things, and that lasted a good 4 years. But towards the end of last year I found that I'd started covering the same areas within my hinterland - i.e. in a confortable after-work-evening-drive distance.
So I decided to try and use that local knowledge to do a load of shots of Leeds, which I've now put into a blurb book (which you can buy ), and also lots of night shooting, which ended up in DSLR User magazine this month.
So I guess what I'm saying is that a getting a project together gave some meaning, motivation and focus to what I was photographing, because I had something in mind at the end of it.
Think the next one's going to be related to "Power in the Countryside" as where I live there's lots of power stations, pylons, wind turbines, and they all sit in pretty nice areas.
Like the idea of that next project Ade.
I have two on the go at the moment, from college and another personal one.
At least two on the backburner for next year at uni or the unseen future.
I think it provides focus and motavation for me, though what to do at the end is unclear as of yet.
I wanted to show my latest but time is running out and I cant put the required effort into it by the prossed exhibition. So might look into books or continue expanding the project and showing some other time.
Who knows, not me
Hi Ade
I think projects can help you when you are learning. So rather than being all over the place and not really understanding why your shots are not working you can focus on particular areas such as shutter speed or apertures or whatever. I've got a vague project going on white things, mostly swans, to help improve my exposures.
Catherine
My project is to take enough good images to have my own website not got there yet :-(
I think you do need something specificto go out and take images of, on Monday i found myself with some time i didn't think i would have, so went out in the car for a couple of hours and found i never took the camera out of the bag once, just couldn't see anything to take, yet on Sunday went out with a plan of what i wanted to take and ended up shooting over 100 images
I never really used to, I had the odd idea but never really pursued them, which is why I took the MA as my aim was to kick me up the arse into doing projects 
and it worked.
I now have a big long list of ideas that I add to as I think of them and then think through them to see if they are viable.
I have two projects proper that I am working on at the moment. One is initially a year long project, but may be extended based around Speakers Corner, the other is a (currently) open ended documentary project about Farm Diversification. I have another couple of real long term projects (one will be about 30 years) that I am trying to start or will be starting this year.
Yeah they do give me focus, in that they make me work in particular ways.
is it limiting? Not yet, as long as I can keep the projects varied enough it should allow me to keep things fresh and interesting
what do I do? well so far I have only completed one and that is now in book form (self published) because I had to as part of the course... and it is something that I think I will do for all the projects as, it is fairly cheap, not too difficult to do and they are a good promotional tool. Oh and I bore you lot on here with them too
Quote: Oh and I bore you lot on here with them too
Goes without saying
as in, we all bore each other with out projects, not just you boring us.... just clear that one up.
I suppose everone's first "project" is to take better shots, but that's not really a project in the sense I was meaning. it's more a themed set of shots with some sort of goal in mind. Mark's one on diversification sounds an excellent idea. I;ve a mate who started up his own milk marketing company to get a better deal the the farmers back home - get yourself up there Mark, it's called Bowland Fresh and can be bought in Booths and Asda.
Another one I've got the idea for is to capture the village I grew up in.
So many of the old people I grew up with in the village (of 70 people) are gone now, there's just one of the generation left actually. thing is, there's no real record of them as a generation. Sure, they all sat on the village benches together and watched us play, but there's not a collection I know of which has them all together
So what I'm thinking of is getting shots of every house in the village with its occupants stood outside in their everyday/work clothes - nothing formal, then get a pen-pic of each family AND the house. Put that lot into a book so we have them all in one place, a bit of history and a record of how the village was in 2008.
Quite a big one really..
But I'm pretty excited about it - which is what counts really.
My current project was trying to capture birds...so after getting bored of Oakwell Hall, I set off today to find somewhere different.
Ended up at Pugneys on the M1 (after getting lost first...god knows how) then I did not really get what I was after but after not wanting to come home with nothing I wandered down to the lakeside and got some nice shots of swans with the sun just coming out I had hope (at last).
Then back home on the dreaded M62 and the rain started nearly home still hopeful and then it hit me...I had left the VR on the lens which was on the tripod...arghhhhh! so basically my project will have to be learn how to use the camera and lens first then maybe I might get some better shots.
Quote: So what I'm thinking of is getting shots of every house in the village with its occupants stood outside in their everyday/work clothes - nothing formal, then get a pen-pic of each family AND the house. Put that lot into a book so we have them all in one place, a bit of history and a record of how the village was in 2008.
Good one, I had considered something similar for where I grew up, however it means going back there 
Ade I will drop you a PM...
I'm taking a 4 day trip up the north-west coast of Scotland on my bike with my camera & walking boots soon.
The idea is to learn my new (2nd hand) 5D inside out and introduce myself to digital photo taking. Will also climb a few hills along the way.
If I have some decent shots I'll upload them to my Alamy collection & another stock library.
Ian.
Projects for me - the major one has been recreating photographic techniques from the fifties and before, but I've done whole series of people like reportage shots of migrant workers I know from the buses into work, and portraits of transgendered friends. The only one that's been posted much here is the still life and flower studies I did a fewe years ago.
Currently I'm doing a 'now and then' project. I take Edwardian postcard images and rephotograph the location. It has its difficulties... most of Edwardian Basingstoke is under the modern shopping centre, and a fair chunk of Edwardian Swansea was seen to by the Luftwaffe.
It's quite rewarding to find even small pieces of architecture that have survived, tho it's frustrating to find you can't shoot from the same angle because new buildings are in the way.
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