The Support Group for Lazy Photographers

May 27, 2023

I have a confession to make: I'm a lazy photographer. That's right, at the end of 2022, I got the chance to be a part of the Support Group for Lazy Photographers, which is an online photography course created and run by the super-talented Italian photographer, Sara Lando. I've followed her work for many years now, and a while back on a podcast she mentioned her course where you get to be a part of a small group of photographers from all over the world. Also, no one knows who each other is because you have to participate anonymously.

For three months, we all went by nicknames and got to interact with each other in a private forum. There were no 'likes' and no algorithms that make you feel like you suck at life. Instead, there was plenty of real interaction and feedback with other human beings.

Each week, Sara would post an assignment prompt that was meant to stretch our understanding of photography. There were quite a variety of themes, but she specifically mentioned that each assignment could be completed with any gear available - even a cell phone camera. This demotion of the gear and promotion of the concept behind the image was so refreshing and educational.

Side note: we also worked on a personal project during these three months. For me, this was a huge challenge as compared to the weekly isolated assignments. I'll save showing my personal project for a later date because I've decided to continue working on it more after the group.

This course stretched me big-time. I was constantly being put into photographic situations that were challenging, and sometimes I submitted work that I felt was pure shit. But it was anonymous, so who cares! My goal was simply to complete each weekly assignment and complete a personal project. Just do the work, and be consistent. It was this forced weekly practice that was a huge benefit to my craft.

Below, you'll see a small selection of my favorite weekly assignment submissions from the group.

The Egg

Assignment prompt: Get an egg, and take a ton of photos. No Photoshop. Cropping is frowned upon. Be creative with light.

For the first session, I kept my setup very simple and just used a handheld flashlight to explore some looks. In this photo (below), the flashlight is directly behind the egg. This one surprised me because the light is so colored from passing through the egg itself. Also, there's a lot of texture in the shell that only is visible when lit this way. Kind of gross really.

Later, I got the speedlights out. I had an image in my head that was mostly negative space and a very long shadow, so I just worked on this for about 35 minutes until I got what I had envisioned in my mind. I was pretty frustrated at times here because the surfaces I used were showing so much texture from raking the light right next to the surface.

Liminal

Prompt: Focus on a border as a physical space. Something that divides a space in two.

I had a hard time with this assignment. I didn't have much time this week, so I stopped at Mt. Tabor Park in Portland on the way home from a long day of physical work. I've photographed at this park many times, but never while considering liminality as a theme. I was struggling for the first 45 minutes, trying to find a composition of the ground/water with the fence as the border separating the two spaces.

Pretty, but who really cares?

After the sun went down and there wasn't enough light to hand-hold a sharp image, I thought it would be fun to do some longer exposure photos and purposely move the camera around to create some motion. The lights had turned on, and so there was an interesting color combo of warm and cool colors.

I liked this one (above) so much that I made it the hero image of this post!

Worth 1000 Words

Prompt: Make an image of a person sitting next to a window and wrapped in a blanket. There must be a table in the foreground with a fork, empty plate, and a half-full glass of water. Somewhere in the frame, there must be a book (with bookmark) and a flower.

For this assignment, I had a vibe in my head that was a mixture of nostalgia and warm summer-ish tones. For props I chose sunflowers, a book with sunflowers on the cover, and some photo-booth photos as a bookmark.

Here's my final version, with a little color grading, grain, and curves adjustments to compress the tones a bit and give a slight film-like look to help with the nostalgia part.

So my main challenge with this assignment was mixing indoor exposure with outdoor exposure. I had it in my mind that I wanted the windows fully blown out, with no detail showing. I wanted this because my backyard was too busy for my tastes in this photo.

I first decided to diffuse the windows from outside the house. I taped a sheer fabric in front of the window for this to work. (I suppose another obvious solution would be indoor sheers, but I don't have those on these windows unfortunately).

This composition and lighting took me a couple hours to get how I wanted. I don't think I've ever spent that much time on a single portrait before. Lots to learn from this assignment.

Abstract

Prompt: Create an abstract image that challenges our popular view of what photography is supposed to be and look like as a medium.

The rains, cold weather, and darkness have made their voices heard in the last week in my city. It's been so gross outside. The leaves and debris are everywhere in the streets too because we had high winds on Friday.

I wanted to bring some of this stormy weather and seasonal change into this week's abstract photos. My setup was very simple: I hand held my camera while taking all the photos below and used long shutter speeds, from .5sec to 2sec and purposely shook and moved the camera while the shutter was open. I did this because I wanted to give the viewer a feeling of being in the wind and rain.

Here are some fall leaves in front of a brightly-colored building:

And here is an abstract of my partner and dog going on a rainy walk:

Album Cover

Prompt: Replicate a classic album cover in your own style.

For this assignment, I took one look at the album cover list and had no hesitation. "I have to recreate Nevermind by Nirvana." This album is one of my all-time favorites, and the cover is truly iconic.

I used a very small plastic toy baby and fake dollar bill and attached them to a glass container with wire so they would stay in place. I got my lighting dialed in before adding any water. For the background, it's a white piece of foam core lit by a speedlight with a cyan gel. I also used another speedlight with a grid for the main light, and another speedlight as a backlight, but I don't think it fired on this frame (funny how that works sometimes). I poured water into the container with one hand and fired off photos with the other, hoping that one of them would look cool and convey motion with the water that was swirling around.

Here's the final photo, with one of the wires retouched out and cropped square:

Here's the photo before retouching so you can see how I positioned the toy baby:

Here's a setup shot for reference:

And here's the two items to show scale. It was really difficult to deal with items this small!

Conclusion

Looking at all this work, I am reminded how challenging this course was for me. Many of the images make me feel like I'm on the edge of my capabilities of visualizing a concept. They look different than my normal style. There's a struggle inside of them. I mean, it's easy to keep taking the same photo over and over. It's easy to dial in the lights the same way you did last time. It's not easy to try something way outside your comfort-zone and understanding.

After all this hard work, at the end of the class I got the chance to have an hour-long conversation with Sara over Zoom to talk about my progress during those three months. It was so cool to chat with an artist I respect so much. I learned so many lessons from being a part of The Support Group for Lazy Photographers, and I thank Sara for all her efforts and vision.

-Chris