createIntermediateAbout 90 minutes

Take a Photo Series Like a Working Photographer

Maps to: Photographer · Photo Editor · Art Director · Visual Storyteller · Photojournalist

Make an interesting and immersive photo series.

You leave with your best 8 to 12 photos, in order. It shows you can pick the photos that tell one story.

You're going to write a short plan for a photo series (photographers call it a brief), take the photos at a bakery, then do the part photographers say they're really paid for: cut the perfectly-fine photos that don't fit the brief and put the good ones in an order that tells a story. The real skill is the picking: deciding which photos, in which order, carry the idea, so a stranger can see the intent at a glance. That's what separates a photographer from someone who takes nice photos. You'll have turned a pile of photos into something that reads as one idea.

How this shows up on a resume or college app

I shot an 8-12 image photo series to a creative brief and made the editorial selection myself, cutting technically-fine frames that didn't serve the concept and sequencing the rest to tell a story. I learned that the photographer's real skill isn't taking one nice photo, it's the selection: deciding which images, in which order, carry the idea.

When you finish you have the thing itself, plus a Common App activity description Sidequest drafts from what you actually built.

Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as a photographer first and see how the work feels.

See what this career pays and what it takes to get in.

The plan

1
Step 1
Develop your idea
Start with the picture you already want to take: 'loneliness in a crowd,' 'one color, one street,' a real thing you want to photograph honestly, a photo everyone takes that you'd take your own way. Name it, then write a brief, which is a short plan for your photos: what the idea is, the one rule you'll keep in every photo, and the feeling every photo has to carry. That brief decides every photo you keep. An AI chat is a good partner for talking it through, but the idea is yours.
2
Step 1-2
Take the photos at the bakery
Elias lets you into the bakery before it opens. Decide what you are going after, then walk through the morning and keep every photo you might use. Photographers always take far more photos than they end up using.
3
Step 2-3
Pick the photos that fit your idea
This is the work, and there's no right answer here, it's your call. Pick the 8 to 12 that carry your one feeling, and be ready to say why the rest did not make it. You will leave out perfectly good photos.
4
Step 3
Put them in an order that tells the story
Same set, different job: decide what order they go in. Choose which photo opens it and which one ends it on purpose, because the order is what turns 12 photos into one story.
5
Step 3-4
Edit them a little, then put them up
Give every photo the same small edit so they all look like they belong together. That matters more than one heavily edited photo. Then decide where the photos go up and which one people see first.