your theme

In order to find your artistic voice and create a thoughtful and creative body of work, it’s important to develop a theme that will help unify your body of work,

express a personal point of view, and connect with your audience.

Conceptbook: Create a conceptual approach that will give depth to your work through brainstorming, research, and reflection writing;

Go through the Create-A-Theme process to gather your thoughts, develop a point of view, and expand your understanding of your topic

(click here for project sheet).

Create a slideshow to showcase your work; your slideshow should be organized, professional, and labeled/numbered accordingly.

* Review topic-theme-framework: this shows you how to take an idea (topic) turn it into a position statement sharing your point of view (theme) and then come up with ideas for your photographs (framework)

Student examples: click here

Student use doc: click here

Some things to think about:

Think about finding ways to push beyond expected solutions-- to tell stories and have dynamic images/ strong impact with clear take home point

Make sure to have variety.

How can you use symbolism?

Research more to be inspired by events, quotes, poems, people, songs ....

Define for yourself and then create imagery that expresses your definition of something.

Interview others to define a topic and then tell their stories.

What role does each image play?

What’s the lesson?

What will your images say about life?

Struggling with an idea for your theme????

Do some brainstorming and generate a list of topics/words then think about: What do you want people to know, think, feel, do?

Do you want to celebrate something?

Are there life lessons you can share with us?

Are you trying to inform/educate us about something you think is important?

What should we value in life? How should we live life? What is most important in life?

Where do you see beauty? Where do you see tragedy? Where do you see strength? Where do you see hope? What does this say about the human condition?

What should we change about the way we live or the condition of the world?

Whom should we honor? Why?

How can we impact the world around us? How can you make a difference?

What is your personal experience or point of view?

What can you say about life/the human condition/our experience/ our impact?