What Students Should Do with Their Summer Break

Michael P. King gives a list of tips over on the NPPA Visual Student blog about what photojournalism students should be doing this summer to improve their portfolio.

I’d add a 13th: Make yourself uncomfortable. Self-assign yourself a project or single image that is so wildly beyond what you’re used to doing that it makes you sweat, that you can’t sleep the night before. Push yourself so far out of your warm-and-fuzzy place that you get a little queasy.

Hate lighting? Go borrow six strobes and use them all in one image. Hate sports? Go shoot an American Legion baseball game. Hate nature photography? Call your local university’s ag department and ask them what the most problematic invasive species is, then do that story.

It’s summer – why be comfortable?