Creative Sunday Practice #17

This week’s Creative Sunday Practice focuses on an object most of us have within arm’s reach: books.

If you’ve been following these weekly exercises for a while, you may have noticed a shift. The practice isn’t really about finding better subjects anymore. It’s about trying things, observing what happens, and slowing down enough to notice details you’d normally skip past.

That’s the muscle this series is designed to train.

So let’s continue.

For this practice, grab a single book. Any book will do. Before thinking about what it represents, focus on what you actually see.
Instead of photographing what the book is, photograph what it reveals when you pay attention.

Here are a few ways to approach the exercise:

📚 Choose one book and resist opening it immediately
📚 Study the cover, edges, spine, dust, wear, and small imperfections
📚 Photograph textures up close
📚 Gently squeeze the pages and observe how the paper reacts
📚 Carefully bend or fold the book to introduce new lines and shapes

When I practiced this at home with my iPhone, I realized how much visual history lives on the outside of a book. Scuffs, softened corners, compressed pages — all small traces of use that quickly turned into a fascinating subject once I stopped rushing.

Try moving around the book. Open it. Close it again. Change the angle. Let your attention guide the frame.

No concept. No outcome. Just practice.
I’ll be back next Sunday with another everyday object to keep this weekly ritual going.

Creative Sunday Practice is a weekly series designed to help you train your creative eye and improve smartphone photography by working with ordinary objects at home.