Shooting in public can sometimes be a difficult task without parameters around what it is you are shooting. I shot these two images at the county fair, and I'm not sure I would have seen either if not for the assignment.
When there is no limit to what you can shoot, everything becomes a potential image. That places a large burden on your brain of figuring out the signal from the noise. Armed with the Lazy Days subject, I was able to narrow my focus from a large set of possible images to a narrow one, which in this case yielded two solid images.
That isn't to say that you have to close your mind off to opportunities that arise outside of the subject, but it takes a strong subject to pull your mind away from that focus. Either way the resulting shots are likely to be better.
In this first photo I liked the spacing and subject matter of the folks eating their summer treats. They have varying levels of engagement with their food and with each other.
In the case of the cows, I love the repetition of the rear ends. They are sitting and waiting for their time to be shown, all cleaned and brushed and looking their best. Even their tails and heads are aligned, making them almost seem like they are in formation.
I was please with my results and really owed the assignment a bit of the credit for placing restrictions in my mind to a better result.
On Taking Assignments
I frequently listen to the On Taking Pictures (OTP) podcast, which I highly recommend to anyone looking for good conversation about creativity, especially as it related to photography. In January 2014 the hosts, Bill Wadman and Jeffery Saddoris, began a new segment of weekly assignments that they gave to listeners. Results of the assignments are posted on the OTP Google Plus group. I decided that I would commit myself to the assignments for a year without interruption, and that I would complete each one before the next assignment was announced on the show each Tuesday morning. My 'On Taking Assignments' blog posts are the culmination of my year-long focus on these assignments.