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Losing inspiration.

J

johnfromnorwich

even my wife noticed the dif..
I've run out of things to shoot. I was actually excited when I saw that someone had dumped traffic cones on the beach last night. I managed two shots yesterday and nothing at all today. Every time I look through the viewfinder.... nothing but the same old same old. Pebbledashed houses, litter and sheep. Anyone else encountered this feeling? How do I make it stop.
 
John,

Try switching to an unfamiliar subject -- e.g., if you usually take considered portraits try candids, if you’re a nature buff at heart try your hand at streeters, if you take pix from afar give macros a try, if you typically take pictures of abandoned cones take a few snaps of Ian's spiffy new hat.

The photographic world is your oyster.

Joe
 
A method I use is to think of a theme and just go out looking for subjects. My most recent was primary colours....
Another thing to try is going out without the camera. Keep an eye open for likely shots and when you arrive home you'll be itching!

Tony
 
Buy a LF camera.

You will spend so much time trying to figure out how to use it, you will stop worrying that you're not taking photographs any more.
 
Joe Petrik said:
John,

Try switching to an unfamiliar subject -- e.g., if you usually take considered portraits try candids, if you’re a nature buff at heart try your hand at streeters, if you take pix from afar give macros a try, if you typically take pictures of abandoned cones take a few snaps of Ian's spiffy new hat.

The photographic world is your oyster.

Joe
Click to expand...

That's what I figured really. I generally shoot 'the beach' because I can get to it in 2 minutes, it changes every day and there aren't usually any (scary local) people on it. I'd considered taking a camera into town (i.e. into work) but realistically it's just like asking to get robbed (main city occupants after 5pm = heroin addicts and street drinkers). Also it's pretty much derelict. I think I need a new beach to study.
 
I think it's part of the process - you drop into your comfort zone very easily and keep taking the same sorts of photos. Changing camera is a good thing to try if it's a change of format (e.g. 35mm to square MF). I can't remember what gear you have, but say something like an Xpan might be something interesting to try which gives you such a different aspect ratio you will be forced to see the world differently.

I find it hard to take pictures without people in the frame - that's my challenge. I'm in northumberland this coming week. I'm going to go with my canon SLR/DSLR setup with a couple of zooms and see what happens. So no Rollei which will make a change...

Cesare
 
Cesare said:
I think it's part of the process - you drop into your comfort zone very easily and keep taking the same sorts of photos. Changing camera is a good thing to try if it's a change of format (e.g. 35mm to square MF). I can't remember what gear you have, but say something like an Xpan might be something interesting to try which gives you such a different aspect ratio you will be forced to see the world differently.
Cesare
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it a comfort zone exactly, but I know what I'm trying to do: No people usually, just the outcome of peoples behaviour and the weather and the time of year on the place I live (wherever it is at the time). Lots of repeat shots of the same place under different circumstances.

I've got 6x7 (Mamiya - best on a tripod, 90 and 50mm lenses), 6*6 (1950s rollei - best in subdued lighting) and 35mm (all manual Zenit and all auto Nikon). Part of the problem is that this area is very small places separated by dual carriageway (all the old roads were destroyed in the 1990s) so unless you are 'in' a place you can't stop anywhere. I drive past things I'd like to shoot every day but there's just no access. The population of Bangor is something like 30% undergraduates (5000 / 15000), so come summer we have a very ugly and quite hostile ghost town. Drive into the mountains and you have wall to wall tourists-in-high tech fibres. I spent a couple of days in South Yorkshire last week and shot 2 rolls immediately - nothing awesome but the terrain was just so different. Cooling towers for starters!!

I may just have locale fatigue.
 
johnfromnorwich said:
I wouldn't call it a comfort zone exactly, but I know what I'm trying to do: No people usually, just the outcome of peoples behaviour and the weather and the time of year on the place I live (wherever it is at the time). Lots of repeat shots of the same place under different circumstances.
Click to expand...

That's actually the hard bit I think and having a notion about what you are doing and why is the most important bit and (surprisingly) rare in photographers. Which is why 98% of them go from taking terrible pictures, to taking well executed terrible pictures to taking well executed terrible pictures on a variety of increasingly expensive or complicated cameras.

So i would think more about your problem, in that sense and ask yourself questions to that end. What am I doing? What am i trying to say? And so on. From your pictures we already know you have the mechanics down and the basic ability to take good pictures (in terms of composition, subject choice, etc.) so whatever you decide to do you can be confident has a good chance of working. We also know from the statement that I quoted above that you are already thinking about it in the "right" way. So I don't think you have any need to artificial constructs like set themes and so on.

In terms of gear I would get less not more as it's just distracting and pointless and quickly gets you into a tail wagging dog situation where the How? dominates the Why? So if you find yourself thinking more about which camera/lens/technique to use then stick it all in the loft for a month and restrict yourself to a single camera/lens (any will do it really doesn't matter) and just concentrate on the artsitic issues.

If that fails have a torrid affair with a dangerous woman half your age and tell everyone she is your muse :)

Matthew
 
You need to actively seek out some new places. Even the same basic subject matter becomes inspiring when you're doing it somewhere unfamiliar. I always shoot far more when I go somewhere new, and the hit rate is usually higher. Nowadays I take very few pictures in my regular haunts, and when I do, it's usually because I've spotted something specific and new.
 
matthewr said:
So i would think more about your problem, in that sense and ask yourself questions to that end. What am I doing? What am i trying to say? And so on.
Click to expand...

That's exactly the brick wall I hit about a year ago. I'm still there, hence no PAW pics!

Every now and again I fluke a half decent photo, but I seem completely unable to find a personal style or language the way so many have here - I love the way I can look at photos from Ian, Concrete, Vuk, Pete etc and not just think "That is a bloody great picture", but actually know who took it without reading the username. In music terms that's when you know when you've arrived; all the great bands or players are identifiable from a couple of chords.

Tony.
 
matthewr said:
In terms of gear I would get less not more as it's just distracting and pointless and quickly gets you into a tail wagging dog situation where the How? dominates the Why? So if you find yourself thinking more about which camera/lens/technique to use then stick it all in the loft for a month and restrict yourself to a single camera/lens (any will do it really doesn't matter) and just concentrate on the artsitic issues.
Click to expand...

In practice, this is what I do. I just carry a Rollei, a yellow filter and two rolls of film in my shoulder bag wherever I go. The Mamiya only comes out if I'm off somewhere specific and I think I might want a wide-angle option. Lens flare can be an issue but the sun only comes out about 3 days a year anyway..

I think I've got too locked into the idea of recording where I live. I'd thought I was going to be leaving in February but I've got another year's funding so I'm here for 2010 too. I'd decided to try and get 20 shots of Llanfairfechan - pop 4000) over the course of a year. I got to 15 that I really liked but the last 5 just haven't happened. Maybe 'here' can be summarised in 15 pictures and the last 5 will always be repeats. I should probably just chill out and wait until I've left. I should also write up my PhD rather than wasting time with my camera :)
 
Rather than switching subject matter, I think it helps to try and work out exactly what it is you're looking for in terms of the feeling/emotion/atmosphere behind the subjects you find yourself drawn to, and then go out with that in mind.

At the same time, if you're taking a single decent photograph a month, you're doing great.
 
There is some good advice in this thread. As someone with the attention span of a gnat, I find that the honeymoon period with a new camera or lens is about a week. After the "I wonder how I can do X shot with this Camera and Lens" fades into "I wish I had brought my old ZZZZ camera and zoom"

My latest obsession has been to fit as many obscure lenses as I possibly can fit onto a micro 4/3rds camera body and still do in focus portraits and macro shots with each. The upshot has been one or two decent shots in each category out of 100s of failures.

I'm full of admiration for photographers who stick to a basic Rollei, or Hasselblad or Mamiya or whatever with one prime lens and produce quality image upon quality image, but I don't actually want to be a production line for endless perfectly exposed shots of my local landmarks because I'm always looking for stuff that can end up on the wall and remain interesting to go back and look at in years to come.

Life is a journey and people and buildings go through changes as they get older, so I can see the point in going back and revisiting a particular person for annual or less frequent portrait records and the same is true of regular haunts or holiday destinations.

One possibility to generate some diversity in the way you shoot is to take some kind of a course which takes you out of your comfort zone. I don't feel comfotable shooting formal photos or fashion photos, but you can take courses that take some of the pain of organising away and let you explore the type of shooting with help from the teacher.

Another way to get out of your comfort zone is to switch scale - do Macros or landscapes instead of middle distance shots, or pick a theme and try to do your best with it. As an example, I have seen a couple of shots of fire hydrants recently which are superb, so pick an inanimate object and do the best inanimate object portrait that you can with as simple a set up as you have in your camera collection. Shooting colour if you normally doing B&W also works,

cheers
Cliff
 
One other thought occurs: it is a lot easier to be enthusiastic about the creative aspects of any form of art if you get good feedback on your work when you show it here or on flickr or wherever. To get good feedback it is very important to return it to. The act of looking at other peoples work and comment on it when you find it is good enough is good in more than one way: you may get feedback yourself, you may find inspiration as you look and you may just feel good about making someone else happy

cheers
Cliff
 
John,

The best thing I ever did was to join an active users forum and post some pictures. In 3 years, I have posted lots of my pics and looked at a multitude of other peoples' images. Some you like, some you don't. Feedback on your own images helps enormously. The quality of what I take now compared to 3 years ago is in a different league.
I was a film diehard; I still shoot kodachrome and HP5. But buying my first digital was a revelation. OK it cost me a fortune (Leica DMR), but it has enabled to shoot far more frames than I would have done with film. Like most things in life, practice makes better.

Good luck,

Charlie
 
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