Proposal writing for Photography and art projects

Section 1 (Intro-proposal-outline)

Introduction – outline of your basic idea – keep it really basic and vague, if you know at this stage what it is you want to do as a final set of images – don’t mention this at this stage. For instance if you knew you wanted to something about dogs and you thought that perhaps you wanted to do a series of images of big bald men from Essex with their ‘mean’ looking dogs, playing around with the idea that people look like their dogs, e.g. hard man and hard dog. Don’t mention that at this early stage. So in this instance you might say something like…

“I’m going to explore the relationships we have animals, I’m going to explore domestic animals(Pets) and also look at people that work with animals – farmers, dog handlers etc.

Then expand on that with more details as in a proposal, mention the fact that you’re going to try experimental approaches (suggest some that you might try) and the idea will be developed over a series of shoots working with the idea. Then at the end say that you’re going to produce some research and analyse the images and the way that people work with animals in their projects/photography.

As a part of this process, you should also produce a spider diagram, exploring different ideas around how you might approach your theme.

Also mention that you're going to keep an open mind about the project and through the process of research the initial idea might develop into something very different.

Before you start researching...

When you start to put your research together. Think about what it is you need to glean from your research...

Concept/Idea/theme/lighting/poses/composition/use of colour/use of equipment/experimental techniques/mood/subject/reasons/perspectives/presentation and more.

This means, although you've already got the idea of shooting Dogs as your theme, if you're researching using journals, you may not have seen any dogs, but you may have come across a photographer that shoots horses or other animals and you may have noted that their use of light, or composition might be useful to you. This also can constitute good research - you could explore that photographer on the basis that you're looking specifically at him/her simply because of the use of light or the way that they compose their animal images.