In a photography rut? Tired of shooting stock? Need a way to reawaken your artistic soul by plumbing it with a challenging project?

Perhaps it’s time to pursue a personal photography project. Such a project allows you to pick a subject you truly care about, something that may require you to explore new territory and even travel great distances to shoot the best pictures ever taken of the subject you choose. The great thing about a personal project is that it allows you the freedom to pursue work you feel passionate about and determine the size and scope of it, including how much time you’ll put into it and how you’ll tackle it.

All of this freedom is bookended by some hard work. At the outset, there is the challenge of securing the funding – most likely a grant – that will cover expenses and help you keep body and soul together while you pursue your passion. At the close, there’s the tricky business of choosing the very best 10-15 photographs that will allow you to tell the entire story.

To help you get started, we’ll give you five favorite grant-seeking tips. Tomorrow, we’ll follow up with links to Web sites of organizations that are now soliciting grant applications from photographers.

First the tips:

• Start by looking at a wide variety of types and sources of grants. Think out of the box: look not only for photo grants but also any funding or equipment source that may be related to your themes, your geographic area, or even your ethnic, religious or sexual identity. Look beyond photographic institutions to arts foundations, academic groups, political groups and of course corporate bodies. You may find that a major camera manufacturer or equipment supplier will help out by donating materials to you. You also should look to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as UNICEF, CARE, or UNHCR that may pave the way to other opportunities and even write a letter of reference for you – a must-have for successfully securing many grants.
• Consider teaming up with a scientist. As photographer Chris Lindner points out on the liveBooks Resolve blog, if you want to photograph science and be paid for your work through a National Science Foundation Grant, you’ll probably need either to partner with a researcher submitting a proposal or get your own science education grant.
• Track deadlines. Create a calendar – or better yet a spreadsheet – of grants that interest you, their deadlines and their award dates. Take the deadlines seriously. Be sure to track the date of each submission and the responses you receive. If you’re rejected, note the next date for reapplication and move on.
• Create a toolbox made up of submission building blocks that you store on your computer. These include:
  • a one-to-two page statement that describes your project and that can be easily revised to meet each grant application’s requirements;
  • a short and compelling autobiography that captures all the key points of your resume. As Jon Anderson points out in his excellent Lightstalkers blog post, Grant Writing 101, this gives you a chance to introduce ideas about photography and your work that may not fit into your proposal essay, but that may give the judges additional reasons to support you. Again, plan to alter these essays based on the requirements of the target grant; and
  • a file of folks you can call on for that all-important letter of recommendation.
• When writing your grant, look out for stylistic crutches that may put the judges to sleep. Keep sentences short. Avoid passive sentences whenever possible. Most of all, make your entry enjoyable and easy to read. A way to check your application for flaws is with readability statistics. If you use WORD, this is an invaluable feature.         

• Here’s what these statistics tell me about what to look for when editing this document:
  
  • Words per sentence: 15.6. That’s wordy, and tells us that we need to revise sentences that include more than one thought and perhaps break them in two.
  • Sentences per paragraph: 3.1. That's low and low is good. It means we're breaking own ideas into digestible nuggets. However, it may be skewed by our use of bullets.
  • Passive sentences: 7%. Not bad! It means that we’re writing in the active tense. The closer you can get to 0, the better.
  • Flesch Reading Ease Score: 60.9. This score rates text on a 100-point scale, and the higher the score, the easier it is for readers to understand. Experts aim for a score of about 60-70 for standard documents, so we’re within range.
  • Kincaid Grade Level: 8.6. Rates text on a U.S. grade school level, and this score indicates an eighth-grader can read this with ease.   

To learn more about this feature visit the 79 Grant Writing Resources blog. 

Check back to see tomorrow’s blog for a list of Web sites now soliciting grant applications from photographers.

Also, click on the “Comments” link below to share an idea or leave a question.