My new personal project: Execution of An Idea The Persona Project

My 131 project was a lot of fun, but now that it has been shown it is time for me to start the process of moving on. My friend Tim Calabro said that there are two things you can do once you’ve created a body of work - you can keep finding places to show it or you can put it aside and make new work and I think he is right. As pleased as I am with the 131 project, I am ready to put it aside (for the most part) and am excited to produce a new body of personal work.

This new personal project is going to be done a bit differently from my 131 project, I am going to flip my process and instead of going into the shoots without a plan, I will go in with specific images I am trying to capture and a plan of how to do so.  So there is the execution part of the plan, but what about the idea? I’ve had several thoughts and decided that none on their own were ones I wanted to stick to strictly for a year, but if the project could be composed of several ideas it could be a fun and diverse challenge. Here is the breakdown:

To start it off here are a few concepts for shoots that I have:

• Persona shoot: The volunteer will be playing a character of their choice. The character could be real or fictional, specific or general. Some ideas are the subject could play a person from a particular era like the 80’s, 60’s, 20’s, or much further back, they may want to play a super hero, a historical figure, a literary figure, it is pretty open ended. If possible it would great to collaborate with other talent such as writers (maybe a story to go with the pictures), hair & makeup, wardrobe, set and prop designers, etc.
• Fashion shoot: If I were to do a fashion shoot I would be looking for something in the realm of high fashion - so bold clothes, hair, makeup, etc.
• Physical feats or unique skills: Can you do something beyond normal human ability? I want to capture that in picture.
• Multi-Media story telling: Is there a good (or great!) story to be told with both audio and visual?
• I may think of some more ideas along the way, but I am also looking for your ideas. With your ideas I want strong visual qualities, creativity, fun, narrative, challenge, and heart. The ideas do not have to strictly fall into portraiture, but this will be a project about people.

Here is my criteria for participating in the project:

• Open to anyone who would like to volunteer, but unlike the past project where I was taking all comers, I will primarily be looking for adults because of the more structured nature and commitment needed. Participants in my past project are welcome to participate and I may even recruit people for some shoots.
• You will allow me use of the images on my website and I will post a selection of images on Facebook in which you will be tagged, I additionally reserve the right to post images on other social media platforms.  I retain all-rights reserve copyright on the images.  For this project I will also be asking for participants to sign a release so I will have the option to make commercial use of the images at some point should an opportunity arise.
• Participants will get a digital copy of the images, but as with past projects it is for personal use only unless I grant permission. Collaborators on particular projects will be able to use the images as supporting material of their contributions for professional portfolios.
• I welcome all ideas and volunteers, but because this project will be a smaller scale than my previous one I may say no thank you to some - even to a great idea if it is not one that ends up fitting with what I want to do.
• This project is not limited to just one individual in the photos - so creating a scene with a group of people is a-okay.
• I will be looking to do all shoots in Vermont primarily in the Randolph area.

What are my goals?

• To do another fun photography project and share my work
• To continue to engage the community
• To continue to get my name (as a photographer) out there for marketing purposes
• To collaborate with other talented people in a variety of mediums
• To continue my professional development. The focus of this project in this area is executing specific ideas with a commercial/conceptual portfolio in mind.

The idea may be a little loose and need some tweaking as I go on, but I am eager to get back to some personal work and excited to see what your ideas are.  Please send me your ideas in a message or email.  Anyone who thinks they want to participate as a subject or as a collaborator (let me know your talents) should also contact me with or without a shoot idea.  Okay, the project starts now - I can’t wait to hear the ideas!

Contact me here: http://defloriophotography.com/contact.html or here https://www.facebook.com/defloriophotography

***UPDATE*** 4-6-14

Based on the interest and feedback to date, I am making some revisions to this still in-the-works project. I am narrowing the focus of the project to just persona shoots and renaming the project to The Persona Project. Most of the original perimeters still apply, but this simplifies things and gives it better direction. I would love to still collaborate with writers to create stories or scene descriptions to go with some shoots as well as other local talent, but it is not necessary (and probably hard to do too many of those). So now it can be as simple as pitching a character you want to portray in a photo shoot - it can be a real or fictional character (or characters - group shots are allowed and encouraged) and can be from any point in time. Contact me soon to with your idea and please share with others who may be interested, I will only be able to do a limited number of these.