If you feel like you haven’t seen many articles from me, you’d be correct. I’ve finally decided to focus on a personal photography project.

To be honest, this has been in my head for about four years. Many of you are likely similar to me in the fact that you tend to have several projects going on at any one time. Website updates or creation, submitting images online to sell, contacting design firms and commercial art agencies, and the list goes on. With that comes anything that might be a distraction or excuse to NOT work on it — well for me anyway.

Personal photography projects help us focus

I’m done not working on my own work. Personal photography projects can help us refocus, get us back on track with our own work and veer us away from the distractions that surround us. While writing articles is part of my work, it is still a turn off the path of my own personal projects and photography.

I happen to be someone who is constantly looking for something to distract me from what I really should be focused on. Trust me, it doesn’t take much.

So, as I’m working on this project I thought I’d share some of the process and hopefully it’ll help you move forward on your own personal projects.

Some steps you can apply to any personal project

Come up with ideas

Coming up with ideas seems like the easy part. I have a never-ending list of ideas. Ideas wake me up at night and keep me awake. Do yourself a favor, write them down or record them somewhere. It doesn’t matter how silly or unobtainable they seem, keep track of them. They may not come to fruition right away, but they never go away and this way you’ll be ready to tackle whatever it is when it comes up again.

Research what you need to

Thankfully, we have access to so much information (too much so I think) that we can get help easily. Do you need to figure out how to self-publish a book? How about finding out what you need to do to start leading local photo tours and all that comes with that? Do you want to create a series of images and exhibit them at a gallery?

No matter what the project is, look up what you can and make the phone calls you need. Talk to others who have done similar projects. All of this research will help your project come together more quickly and go much more smoothly.

Just start your personal project

This can be the hardest step. Start. Now. Do one little thing that gets your project going. Once you start you’ll get excited about it. When you’re excited about it you’ll want to work on it and you’ll (I’ll) stop looking for distractions.

Then just keep going. One little step at a time. Edit an image. Write the text that goes with an image. Create a mock-up book cover. Write your artist bio. Commit yourself to working on your project every single day. Even if you do something you think is so minor, it’s still progress.

Hold yourself accountable

Not good with accountability to yourself? Find a way.

Ask a friend, fellow photographer, coach or mentor to be an accountability partner. Have a plan for yourself to share with others either publicly or privately, so you are accountable to them and yourself for having to make progress they can see.

Write about your project. Post updates on social media, your blog, or you know, even write an article about it.

Ask for help

Make sure whoever you are telling about your project knows it’s ok to nudge you once in a while. Ask them to check in with you every so often to ask how your project is going.

If you are feeling you’ve hit a wall, reach out to someone and ask for some help to just talk you through whatever it is that has you stuck.

What are you waiting for?

OK, get going. Start.

Then share your project, the progress or when it’s finished. Tell us about it in the comments or share more about it in the Photofocus Community. These things are always easier when we share.

Four years after her big day, a woman contacted her wedding photographer demanding a full refund. She cited divorce as the reason for her request.

Sarah Piantadosi was just 16 when she put together her first photography project. Having found little inspiration in her isolated home town of Winnipeg, she decided to document the high school culture around her, from people partying and taking drugs to queer couples making out. But when she submitted the photos for an assignment, her tutors refused to mark it. “I wrote an article in my school newspaper about it,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t take a photo of two guys or girls kissing?’”

Piantadosi, now 39, has been drawn to transgressive photography ever since, from the crude explorations of gender and family by Diana Thorneycroft to the erotic depictions of New York’s underground gay community by Robert Mapplethorpe (who she acknowledges is problematic). “I realised you could make strong subversive statements with photography,” she says. “I found it exciting and appealing.”

After moving to London in 2007, Piantadosi began to pursue photography as a career, building up a formidable portfolio with clients including Dior, Calvin Klein and Alexander McQueen. Yet, despite her extensive CV and her interest in bold pictures, the prospect of shooting nude portraits made her feel uncomfortable.

“There’s this cliche,” she says, “of the male photographer and the young female model and the, ‘Oh, let’s go over to my house and we’ll take pictures’ where all sorts of gross shit goes down.” In the early days, she worked as a lighting assistant and remembers seeing condoms falling out of photographers’ camera bags. “And then when #MeToo came along and all the stories started coming out, you just know there’s a mountain of them. It’s so disturbing. I didn’t want to start in that place.”

But how could she take a more sensitive approach, respecting consent and boundaries? “I’d looked at other photographers’ nudes and thought there was a real intimacy there,” she says. “I was like: ‘Gosh, how do you achieve that?’”

Inspired by what she calls a “generational shift” at the start of the pandemic, she set out to photograph more than 50 twentysomethings in London and Paris over a year and a half, using the nude as a way to explore ideas of agency and empowerment. “I just felt that the generation younger than me were taking a stand in a way I hadn’t seen before,” she says. “They don’t want to be silenced. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want more autonomy. That’s super powerful.”

Bone, her first book, brings together the results in a full-frontal display of how young people engage with their bodies and boundaries. Some portraits are intimate and stripped back, with the subject curled up in a bed sheet or reclining on a rug; others have a more mystical quality, owing to Piantadosi’s experiments with lighting. The use of overexposure evokes auras and obscures body parts, allowing her to also play with concepts of self, gender and androgyny.

A black and white shot of Lilith, who is non-binary, is particularly striking: the stark contrast renders them featureless, save for their dark pubic hair, instead illuminating the outline of their figure as it locks into an exaggerated power pose. Elsewhere, an androgynous subject leans back Renaissance-style, but bathed in an iridescent sheen.

“When I started messing around with these techniques,” she says, “it was almost like capturing a different version of reality. I wanted to reveal the character within – or the aspirational fantasy of oneself. I questioned how I could make something that is meaningful to the subject as well.”

The portraits represent a broad cross-section of this younger generation, bringing together different genders, races and sizes, many of which have been shunned by mainstream media. Foregrounding these demographics is a rare luxury Piantadosi attributes to her working independently. “You’re making work on your own terms,” she says. “You’re able to express things that maybe you can’t in commercial and editorial photography.”

Most of the subjects – a term she insists on instead of “models” – are working musicians, writers and artists. “I didn’t want to just photograph a bunch of models from an agency or from the runway. I was more interested in street casting and capturing this generation working within culture. As a society, we really need that. We need to see variety to feel normal and healthy in ourselves.”

In an attempt to confront photography’s history of exploitation, Piantadosi worked with a casting director and preceded each sitting with a 30-minute chat over a cup of tea. “I think these extra steps are so important,” she says, “because there is a power dynamic when you’re a photographer, especially if you’re photographing somebody young and inexperienced. They might want to make you happy and give you what you’re asking for. It’s important that the boundaries be discussed beforehand.”

Piantadosi’s slow and considered approach also carved space for experimentation and collaboration. Sometimes, she worked on a set with a team of stylists and designers. Other times, the shoots took place one-on-one in her home. Often, she encouraged the subjects to bring along a personal item, a piece of jewellery, say, or a pair of gloves, to add a new dynamic.

In one especially cinematic portrait, a subject stands against a sleazy backdrop of car headlights, wearing just a pair of fishnet tights. Elsewhere, another poses with their hands on their hips as they glance steadily down at the camera, one cowboy boot suspended in the air.

Shooting in digital meant Piantadosi could tether her camera to a screen that she and her subjects could see, allowing them to exchange ideas or concerns. In some cases, she organised reshoots to try out new concepts or track an “evolving story”. She laughs. “I’m making it sound like the photos are saccharine or corny, but I don’t think they are. Just because you have this approach of empathy doesn’t mean you can’t still take a real sexy, devilish and subversive photograph.”

It felt exciting, Piantadosi says, to capture the cultural shift she had witnessed. “We’ve never had these conversations so intensely, or had such a demand for these conversations to be in the mainstream. I think now people are angry, they want to speak out and they should. Why should all the power be in the hands of rich white guys?”

But with so much political uncertainty, she’s intrigued to see how the book will age. “Will the conversation have progressed further and the book will seem like a relic?” she muses. “Or will things have regressed and we’ll look back to a time when we were freer?”

Producing Bone meant a lot to Piantadosi, professionally and personally. But what she really values is the responses from her subjects. “I just hope they can look at the book and be proud of their picture. I hope they can look back at it when they’re 80 and be like, ‘Oh my God, I had the guts to do that.’”

• Bone is out now via Sarah Piantadosi’s website.

William Casby, who had been enslaved, was 106 when a famous photographer asked him to sit for a photo.

Good morning. Today we’ll look at a Richard Avedon photograph that traced a shameful arc in the nation’s history in a very personal way.

Sandra Jones remembers the day “the guy came to do the picture.”

It was March 24, 1963. She was a teenager. “The guy” was one of the world’s most famous photographers, Richard Avedon.

Avedon had seen a short article in a newspaper that said that her great-grandfather, William Casby, had been born enslaved in Virginia. The article said that Casby had just turned 106. Avedon decided he wanted to photograph Casby, who lived in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans.

The portrait Avedon took was stark and startling. It went into “Nothing Personal,” a book published the following year with an essay by James Baldwin, a friend of Avedon’s from their days at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

Avedon considered the portraits in “Nothing Personal” to be “some of my very best work.” As the photography historian Philip Gefter wrote in 2017, they stand as “a stark yet authentic counterpoint to the American image of eternal youth and anodyne good cheer” — the relentlessly upbeat tone that Madison Avenue, in particular, served up in the 1950s and 1960s.

Besides Casby, “Nothing Personal” included photographs of the celebrated wit Dorothy Parker, by then in her 60s and looking more sad than sardonic; the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg; and Maj. Claude Eatherly, the pilot who had decided that the weather over Hiroshima was right for dropping the atomic bomb in 1945.

Now the Casby portrait is going into another book, to be published for the 100th anniversary of Avedon’s birth. The Casby image is one of 150 Avedon photographs accompanied by brief essays.

It is also in “Avedon 100,” an exhibition at Gagosian, the gallery on West 21st Street, that also features family portraits that Avedon took at the same time — Casby flanked by several generations of descendants. More than a dozen of descendants of those descendants gathered for the opening of “Avedon 100” last week.

Jones, at 74, was the oldest. The youngest was Aiyanna Casby, who at 4 months of age was about the same age that Cherri Stamps-McCray was when she sat on Casby’s lap for the photograph in 1963.

Sandra Jones said that Casby had been a shoe repairman. “I used to go by there,” she said, and to her delight, “he’d put taps on our tennis shoes.”

He would talk about the Civil War era — the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, the year he turned 6 — and the aftermath, “saying it was a bad time,” Jones said. “My grandfather wanted for us things that he did not have because he grew up in that era when he was on the plantation.”

“He would talk about how hard the work was and how hard they worked,” she said, “but his hands were soft as cotton” — the crop on the plantation where he had been born. “That was the thing I could never get,” she said. “My grandfather’s hands were soft. I don’t know whether he was privileged to not pick as much as somebody else or something.”

His goal “for all of us was to do better than before,” she said. “The avenues were open more than when he came along. Even now, my grandchildren, they’ve got more opportunities than I had.”

Jones pointed out her mother and sisters in the photograph on the gallery wall. It is a few feet from another family portrait, Avedon’s photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with his father and his son. On the same wall is a portrait of Malcolm X, the former Nation of Islam leader.

Nearby is a portrait of Donyale Luna, the first African American model pictured in Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon took flak from William Randolph Hearst Jr., after advertisers pulled out of the magazine and, for what Avedon called “reasons of racial prejudice and the economics of the fashion business,” never photographed Luna for a fashion magazine again.

Renitta Sweet, a cousin of Sandra Jones and a great-great-granddaughter of Casby, said she had heard about him “since I was a child.” She said she had contacted the Avedon Foundation in 2020 to ask if there were other photographs besides the portrait in “Nothing Personal.” “I knew they took more than one,” she said.

Gagosian asked 150 well-known artists, curators, musicians and writers to select an Avedon photograph for “Avedon 150” and write a paragraph about why it was important. The art dealer Peter MacGill chose the portrait of Casby. The family chose the two group photos, and Sweet, her brother Roderick Mitchell and their uncle Tyrone Casby drafted the paragraph that will go into the new book.

It says that Casby witnessed “the lies of Reconstruction, the injustices of the Jim Crow era and the infinite shortcomings of this blatantly racist country.”

“This history is not distant,” it says.

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Weather

Expect a mostly cloudy start to a sunny day, with temperatures near the mid-70s. At night, it’s partly cloudy. Temps will drop to the mid-50s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until May 18 (Solemnity of the Ascension).

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The latest New York news

• Trump case: A New York Times analysis of about 30 false business records cases brought by Alvin Bragg and his predecessor shows that in this respect, the case against Donald Trump stands apart. In all but two of the indictments reviewed by The Times, the defendant was charged with an additional crime on top of the false records charge.

• Two men’s disparate paths and a killing on the F train: Jordan Neely’s mental health decline played out in public after his mother was strangled. Daniel Penny said he was protecting himself and others when he choked Neely. Their encounter has once again revealed the deep fault lines in the ways New Yorkers, and Americans beyond, view race, homelessness, crime and how some people seem to be treated differently by the police.

• A reporter makes “the invisible visible”: Andy Newman, a Metro reporter, shadowed Intensive Mobile Treatment teams that serve adults suffering from mental illness. Two of the stories he heard have stayed with him.

• A new High Line bridge: A new foot bridge will allow pedestrians to reach the High Line from Moynihan Train Hall without having to cross several streets. Our reporter Winnie Hu watched its installation.

• Vanished art, rediscovered: Towering remnants of tropical décor from the Empire State Building, which were believed to have vanished decades ago, will return to public view at the Park Avenue Armory.

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METROPOLITAN diary

Perfect black boots

Dear Diary:

While much of the city was watching the World Cup final, I wandered the streets of SoHo in search of the perfect winter footwear.

Standing in a small boutique, my gaze locked onto a pair of black combat-style boots. I asked the sales clerk if she had them in my size.

“Good choice,” she said. (No wonder. When she walked out from behind the register, I saw that she was wearing the same pair.)

Later, I headed back to my apartment in Bed-Stuy. When I got to my apartment door I had the uncomfortable realization that I had the bag from my shopping, but I was missing my tote — and, with it, my wallet and keys.

I mentally retraced my steps, recalling the different stores I had stopped at that afternoon. I couldn’t figure out where I might have left the bag.

I was tired, and it was getting dark out, but I headed back into Manhattan on what I was convinced would be a fool’s errand. Soccer fans were emptying out of bars, and the afternoon’s calm had been replaced by a more frenetic energy.

I went back to every store I had gone to earlier and scoured the subway station. No sign of the bag. Eventually, I abandoned the search and headed home again.

When I got there, a group of about a half-dozen young people was gathered outside the building. My first thought was that someone was having a party.

They continued to stand there as I got closer. No one had let them in.

“Are you Michelle?” one asked when they saw me. “We found your bag at the Canal Street station, and thought we’d try to return it in person.”

The perfect black boots were no longer the highlight of my weekend.

— Michelle Berry

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.

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Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.

Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.

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The Classic Photograph Fair présente sa deuxième édition, qui se tiendra dans l’historique Conway Hall de Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1R 4RL, le 13 mai, de 9h à 16h. La Classic Photograph Fair est la seule foire de photographie gratuite de Londres, qui se concentre sur la photographie classique et vintage. Se déroulant pendant Photo London, la foire The Classic Photograph célèbre la photographie datant des premières années du médium.…

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MOUNT PLEASANT MILLS — Birth photographer Megan Angstadt-Williams’s first paid booking ended up being a sort of baptism by fire: a home delivery with more than 17 hours of labor that culminated in the baby having breathing problems and the mother and child being transferred by ambulance to the hospital. Still, both Angstadt-Williams and the new parents were glad she was there.

“The midwives were amazing. Everyone was calm, cool and collected,” Angstadt-Williams said. “I just continued to document and do my thing.”

Mother and baby were fine, and she eventually documented another birth for the couple.

Although she’s only been doing birth photography for a little more than two years, Angstadt-Williams had two winning images. “Liminal Space” earned a Bronze Award and “Skin to Skin” placed in the top 20 percent of the entries in the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers (IAPBP) 2023 Birth Photography Competition.

“It was a little mind-blowing,” she said of winning awards in an international competition that she entered on the spur of a moment. “It was a great honor.”

“The annual competition by IAPBP celebrates the beauty of birth and the skill of birth photographers around the globe in four main categories — birth details, labor, delivery, and postpartum. New this year are four subcategories: black & white, documentary, fine art, and hardship & loss,” said an IAPBP press release. “We are incredibly proud of the entrants of this year’s competition because in spite of all we endured in our community in recent years, this contest represents the resistance birth photographers have to overcome unforeseen challenges.”

To see Angstadt-Williams’s award-winning photos, visit https://birthphotographers.com/2022-birth-photography-image-competition/.

While some might shy away from documenting their birthing experience, Angstadt-Williams’s clients are happy they hired her.

“I absolutely adore Megan,” said Christiana Delk, of Kulpmont, Angstadt-Williams’s first client.

Delk recalled a particular photo taken from above the birthing pool while her husband’s arms were wrapped around her. When she saw the picture, she was amazed.

“I didn’t even notice Megan doing it. She has such a calming presence. I had no idea she was there most of the time,” Delk said. “She’s absolutely incredible. She’s kind of like a wallflower, blending in with the background. She is a great fit in a birth space.”

Briana Chasen, of Bloomsburg, hired Angstadt-Williams as both her birth photographer and certified birthing doula last October.

“She did an absolutely phenomenal job,” Chasen said. “She was amazing. I didn’t even notice her taking photos. I knew she was there, but I never noticed a flash. I’m still speechless. We told her we would have her back for every birth. She’s special to the family.”

Why do it?

Angstadt-Williams firmly believes everyone should have a professional birth photographer to document their babies entering the world. She is honored when clients trust her to share in such a personal event and enjoys seeing her clients’ expressions when they review the photos and remember their experiences through a different lens.

“People are so focused during labor, they don’t know what’s going on around them. It can be empowering to see how powerful they looked while going through it,” she said.

She finds beauty in the struggle of birthing, the fact that it hurts and is hard to do. She firmly believes that birth is not taboo or pornographic and hopes that photos like the “raw and uncensored images that received recognition” in the contest can be normalized as part of life.

“It can be scary, but people do it anyway, over and over again,” she said, explaining how birth brings blood and messiness along with a living being. “Blood is bringing new life into the world. It shouldn’t be a taboo topic. It’s not gross. It’s just another aspect of people’s lives.”

Considering that everyone must experience birth and death, perhaps it’s not surprising that she is also drawn toward Bereavement Photography, capturing the few precious moments parents can share with a deceased newborn.

“It’s just a gut kind of feeling. This is what I was meant to be doing, especially the niche bereavement work,” she said. “I feel like there is such a need for it. In these situations, people won’t get to see their baby again. It can be really healing to have those photos.”

Beyond birthing and bereavement, she also does all sessions that relate to parenthood, including maternity, birth, newborn and family. She likes to take lifestyle photos of families — let the kitchen counter be covered with baby bottles and the living room carpet strewn with toys. These photos preserve a true-to-life moment that will one day bring back tender memories.

When Angstadt-Williams takes on a new client she agrees to get to them as quickly as possible when their birthing process begins. However, she recalled one time when she got the call, was in her car within 10 minutes, and still arrived to find the parents cradling their minutes-old babe.

“I just walked in, and there they all were,” she said with a smile. “I was still able to document all those post-partum events.”

Another time she photographed a surrogate mother giving birth for the adoptive mother.

“That was really touching,” she said, adding after some thought, “Each birth has these special moments. It’s hard to pick a favorite.”

For more information, visit http://www.badgerandquillphotography.com/.

Cindy O. Herman lives in Snyder County. Email comments to her at CindyOHerman@gmail.com.

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Imagine a photographer shows up late for a shoot. He hurries through the house and misses some rooms, requiring a return visit. The photography is delivered a week later, much to the annoyance of the agent and seller.

Across town, a professionally dressed photographer arrives on time and engages the homeowner with a friendly greeting before expertly capturing every angle of the house. She opens all doors so she doesn’t miss a room and adjusts the lighting to portray a warm, inviting ambiance. The next day, the agent receives a complete media package. The listing posts, days before the other agent ever receives his pictures.

Which photographer would you choose? The answer may be obvious now, but in the preliminary stages of selecting a photographer, it can be hard to know which one will show up at the property. Here are some best practices to ensure your listing (and your client) are set up for success:

1. Do your homework. As listings linger on the market and home prices stagnate and fall, photography has never played a more pivotal role in the buying and selling of a home.

In today’s competitive market, it’s more important than ever to ensure your listing stands out with a variety of high-quality photography and media.

Ask for referrals from other agents you trust. Then look at photographers’ portfolios and check for consistency, which comes with experience and training.

2. Stand out from the pack. In response to the pandemic, new technology has emerged in support of virtual open houses. Moving forward, agents will see more options in real estate media vying for the buyer’s attention during the home-buying process.

For instance, new AI-powered interactive floor plans by ShowingTime+ have transformed the static listing into a fully immersive client experience by providing an all-in-one virtual tour and floor plan that lets buyers click and view a room from any perspective on the floor plan.

You might also look to increase the variety of your listing media, including drone photography and other add-ons such as amenity photography and virtual staging, particularly for vacant properties.

3. Determine turnaround time ahead of time. As every agent knows, a photographer’s turnaround time can make or break a listing. To ensure efficiency, check referrals and review the company’s policy to see how long you can expect delivery.

While smaller one- or two-person teams might not have the bandwidth and operational support to ensure a fast one- to three-day turnaround, a larger, well-run operation equipped with editors, customer support, and a delivery team may be more likely to have the resources to guarantee your images as fast as the next day.

4. Test the booking experience. Real estate is a fast-paced business, so agents need real-time booking information that’s fast and easy to navigate. A great first question to ask when vetting photographers is, “What does the ordering process look like?” According to Abby Kopp, Manager, Photographer Network Operations for ShowingTime+ new Listing Media Services, her team is able to provide an open and flexible booking system to maximize photographers’ availability and give agents real-time scheduling visibility.

5. Prepare with a pre-shoot checklist. Another key to a great shoot is in the preparation of the home. Great photographers will help coach agents and clients on how to prepare the home including turning on lights, turning off ceiling fans, and removing cars from the driveway.

“Get that pre-shoot checklist done and have that house ‘showing ready,’” says Kopp. “So when the photographer arrives, your listing will look great!”

Click here for a free downloadable pre-shoot checklist to share with your clients.