Welcome back to the Liv Avenida Blog! As we are looking at the end of summer (and the intense heat it brings) fading away, our minds are focused on goals and aspirations that often flood people’s social media feeds. Take when summer ends, for example. One goal that we often see is the pledge to finally sit down and write that best-seller. Did you know that you don’t need to write in order to produce a great work of art? In many ways, writing a best-selling novel is like taking a photograph. We hope that today’s blog post will inspire you to expand your horizons in these coming months as a resident of the Liv Avenida apartment community in Chandler, Arizona.
Writers and photographers have at least one thing in common: they’re both artists. But as we’ve stepped a little into both areas, we’ve come to realize that writers and photographers have much more in common than a simple title. We’ve compiled a list of 5 ways photography is like writing a novel.
1. Choose Your Genre — When a writer decides to write a story, they must choose which genre the story falls under. In a similar way, a photographer must do the same thing. They decide what type of photograph they are going to take (Is it going to be a landscape shot, a portrait, or maybe an underwater masterpiece?). Even if the story or photograph comes suddenly and unexpected, it still fits into a specific category.
2. Begin at the End — This is all about having a goal. After choosing the genre, both the writer and the photographer have an idea about how their story or photograph will end; the writer has an idea about the story’s conclusion, and the photographer has an idea about what the final photo will look like. They have a vision of how it will end even if they aren’t sure how they will get there.
3. Create the Characters — What people or objects will you select to tell the story of your photograph? What devices will you use to frame the shot so it’s set just right? Each element in the shot plays an important role in bringing it all together.
4. Write the First Draft — Writing the first draft is a lot like taking those first shots as a photographer, especially if it’s for a type of photo that you’ve never done before. It may be uncomfortable at first, but as soon as you start it gets better.
5. Rewrite and Edit — No one gets it right the first time. There are always mistakes waiting to happen. The beautiful thing is with more practice the mistakes get easier to spot, and therefore, avoid. As always, practice helps us perfect what we’ve been striving for.
So take some time to do some writing or take some pictures this month! Feel free to post your work in the comments.
