A stalled shoot usually comes from too much freedom, not a lack of skill. When photographers can’t pick a subject, the camera stays in the bag and the day gets wasted.
Coming to you from Craig Roberts with e6 Vlogs, this practical video opens with a small test: Roberts shows three photos and asks you to guess what connects them. You see another set and get asked again, which nudges you into looking for patterns instead of judging each frame on its own. Roberts describes a familiar moment where you’ve planned time to shoot, you want to make something, and then you realize you have no idea where to go or what to aim at. The decision paralysis is the real problem, not the weather, not the gear, not the location. His solution is to walk out the door with a “project” in mind, meaning a simple rule that ties the next set of images together.
Roberts is clear that “project” does not need to be grand or long-term. He points out that the photos shown early in the video came from separate projects, including one built around the color orange and another built around church interiors. The underlying move is straightforward: pick a subject or constraint that makes the shoot about collecting related frames, not grabbing whatever happens to look good. He also talks about how he used to pitch article ideas to magazine editors, and how vague themes were less likely to land than a tighter angle. The examples he gives are useful because they show how to take something broad like “autumn” or “long exposures” and give it teeth with one extra condition, such as an angle, a place, or a specific subject choice.
Once you start thinking this way, the day stops being a random walk and starts being a hunt. Roberts says a project can push you toward new subjects or new views, because you’re scanning the world for matches to the rule you chose. He also says a project can be a reason to try a technique you might not have tried otherwise, which changes what you practice without turning the outing into homework. In a city, he frames projects as a way to look deeper at the environment and cycle through different approaches instead of repeating the same shots. In the countryside, he takes a shot at the default “wide view” mentality and argues that a project can pull you away from the obvious overlooks and the standard foreground-midground-background setup, especially when you feel like every landscape outing starts to look the same.
Roberts then shifts into time scale, and this is where the idea gets more flexible than it first sounds. Some projects are built for a single shoot: pick a basic idea, plan the day around it, and treat it like a focused assignment. You can return to the same location later and run a completely different project there by changing the theme, which keeps familiar places from going stale. Other projects run for weeks or longer, where you build a collection over time by visiting new places that fit the idea. He also describes long-term projects you dip in and out of, where the subject stays in the back of your mind and you add to it whenever you stumble onto the next example, which changes how you pay attention on ordinary days. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Roberts.