What are some of the best photography projects online?
There are plenty of amazing and spectacular photography projects out there. However, these four photography projects stand out as being among the most creative and unique.
Afghan Box Camera Project
The Afghan Box Project is a Kickstarter project that aims to offer a detailed record of Afghanistan’s dying art of instant photography. The individuals behind the photography project completed their first trip to Afghanistan in 2011 and brought all of the material and resources from that journey to their website. They’re planning to come back and are aiming to procure at least $9,800 to make it possible.
During their journey back in 2011, they met some wonderful photographers utilizing the most primitive, hand-built cameras you could ever imagine.
The Afghan Box Camera
This box camera’s hallmark is the kamra-e-faoree, or also referred to as “instant camera.” At first glance, the kamra-e-faoree looks like a huge basic camera–a big wooden box placed on a stable tripod–but inner gears are very much different.
The wooden casing serves as both a darkroom and a camera: the focusing is adjusted by hand through a wooden sliding dowel, and a couple of little trays of photosensitive paper and chemical solutions are contained inside the wooden box itself. Once the photo is shot, the photographer then utilizes a light-tightened sleeve and slips it through their wrist, where they manually process the image prints.
Afghan Box Camera Photographers
“What transpired seriously took us by surprise. We met so many Afghans who believed that analog photography was their way of life and a skilled art form. They were practising this industry with basic box cameras, but they were still able to produce very sophisticated images of the world away from the depictions of war and chaos for which their nation is unfortunately known.”
These Afghan box camera photographers could show you the kind of art that can be achieved even if you don’t have the top of the line and most advanced equipment.
Night Zero Photography Project
Night Zero is a continuing photo-novel that gravitates around a zombie apocalypse theme.
Conceptualized as a “neo-noir style graphic novel with photography” in 2007, it involves several storylines about Seattle’s people during and after the first zombie infection. The cast consists of drama students and local actors, and the entire photography project shot in an HDR style that creates images that lie between real photos and illustrations.
It has been going on online since late 2008 and still continues to update thrice a week. You could read it online for free or pay for complete volumes from Amazon.
What is Night Zero All About?
The Night Zero project site provides a deeper insight into the entire process, though, from post-production bubbles to script cards and a lot and more–all enlightening stuff. This whole process is by no means less meticulous than the production of a graphic novel, with each complex detail mapped out beforehand.
The disparities are evidently vast as well; the whole process needed a large number of people, right down to extras, and a long string of technical and logistics issues that you just would not see with a large pad of paper and a packet of pens.
Yes, similarities and differences could be tossed back and forth all day; humans and primates are pretty much the same, but still so different. They have their strong points, primates could climb trees, but humans make use of ladders. That idea evokes the same kind of feeling; the Night Zero project is fascinating, surreal, and utterly exciting.
4 am Project
A global collaborative effort, the 4 am Project endeavours to bring together photos from around the globe “during the magical 4 am hour”.
It is super easy to get involved. You just need to post your photos to the Flickr website and tag them with “4amproject”. More than 5,000 images have been collected for the photography project to date.
This project aims to unite professional and novice photographers, as well as non-photographers, together to make a worldwide community that showcases how spectacular our surrounding landscapes could be.
“Streets that are oftentimes teeming with traffic and activities are deserted and empty, shopping malls are silent and hillsides serene and peaceful, the best time to get your camera and capture the fleeting moments.”
Taking so many shots during the time we are typically sleeping, and carrying it over three years, is just pretty incredible. The power and influence of social media are really outstanding.
Focused
This photography project aims to discover what art professional photojournalists could produce if they had only one chance to shoot a photo.
“Five manual 35mm cameras would be pre-loaded with just one single roll of film and stuffed into five distinct camera bags. Then, these bags would be shipped throughout the globe from one photojournalist to the next one – a photojournalist residing in a small town in the heart of the United States, another working on relief efforts in a natural disaster zone halfway across the country, or one who’s working the White House press pool.
Every photojournalist would only be given just one click of the shutter.”
The Benefit
It is an unparalleled opportunity for hundreds and hundreds of photojournalists to work together. Additionally, all the funds raised through print sales, book sales, and even unused donations would be allotted to fund youth photography projects and programs worldwide.
The Focused Project has partnered with AjA Project in San Diego, Fundacion Ph15 in Argentina, Critical Exposure in Washington DC, and Through the Eyes of Hope in Rwanda to help develop their wonderful programs to teach underprivileged youth the magic of photography.
The Future
Supporting the completion of these cameras’ interesting journey, hundreds of images would be curated into limited edition print sales, a website, and galleries to archive the initial project. The photography project would then be marketed and advertised as a book sold globally to help organizations that uphold a fruitful photojournalism foundation.
Did you like the projects on our list? If you know more noteworthy photography projects, tell us all about it in the comments.
