Saturday, July 10, 2010

Limit your creativity

Well, the title above is a bit misleading. The purpose of this post is to give you a few ideas that will help you unleash your creativity, not hinder it. Keep on reading, and you'll find out what kind of limits I'm referring to. 
If your photography is in a rut, or just need a little boost to get your creative juices flowing again, there are some exercises that will surely jump-start your image-creating endeavors. 

Here's a few little exercises you can try out.

1 - The "one lens a day" exercise
There are those who think that using a zoom lens makes a photographer lazy. And I understand where they're coming from. It's easy to get into the habit of using a wide-angle lens setting for group shots, going to the telephoto side for portraits, and normal lens settings for, well, everything else. All without having to move actually. The zoom lens lets you do that.

But lets say today is your special day, when you can dedicate a day to yourself, and you decide to hit the town with your camera. Get your camera and only one lens, say a wide-angle lens, and hit the street. If you only have a zoom lens then make it a point to only use it at it's wide-angle setting. Beat the temptation to twist the zoom ring and get to the telephoto end of your lens. If you really need to get close, then use your perfectly healthy legs to move closer.

Next day you're out on the street use your lens only as a telephoto, not a wide-angle or normal lens. Again, if you want more space around your subject, then just use your good little legs to take a few steps back. Just be careful and watch where you're going.

Next time you're out use a mid-range setting on your zoom lens. Something closer to a normal lens. You get the idea. Use your imagination.

The idea here is that by limiting yourself to using only one type of lens, or zoom lens setting, you force yourself to work around your limitation, if you can really call it that, and get the most out of the perspective, depth of field and field of view of a certain lens. Try it out.You may be pleasantly surprised at the images you get.

2 - The "one type of subject" exercise
This is an exercise that doesn't really need a long explanation, due to its simplicity. The idea is to go out and shoot only objects that are a certain color. Or maybe if you're into street portraiture take pictures only of people wearing hats, or people wearing T-shirts. Or maybe you'd like to photograph only objects that are round, or square. You get the idea. I've seen photography portfolios showing only objects that are red. This can be quite interesting, especially if there are images of objects you normally don't associate with a certain color, like a red car tire.

3 - The "take thirty steps, turn around and shoot" exercise
No, this is not an exercise where the loser ends up dead. This can be done individually, but it works out better if you're out shooting with several of your photographer friends. Each of you take turns in counting steps and deciding on what direction you want to go. You all decide beforehand if you'll be counting 25 steps, 30 or whatever. You can take little steps, or make your stride really long; although you may look a bit weird.

But anyway, once you and your friends stop counting and walking you remain at that one spot and start shooting. Everyone can turn around and photograph whatever they want, but without moving from that spot. 

And you continue with this process taking turns counting and deciding what direction to go. Once shooting is done for the day each photographer selects his or her best shot for each spot that was selected during the session. Then everyone gets together and compares the results. It's amazing to see the different results different folks can get even standing at the same spot. You may capture the same object I shot, but with a different point of view. Or maybe you capture something that I didn't even notice was there.

This is a really interesting exercise I practiced during a recent photography workshop I attended. Try it out. Even if you don't have friends who are willing to go marching up and down the street with you, you can get some interesting images doing it on your own. By limiting your range of movement you force yourself to look in all possible directions, and pay attention to detail, and possibly capture something you wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

So as you can see from the exercises above, you can release your creativity by imposing limits on yourself, as illogical as it may sound. And these are just a few examples. I'm pretty sure if you set your mind to it you can come up with several exercises of your own.
See you out on the street.





 

Friday, July 9, 2010

Scott Kelby's Third Annual Worldwide Photo Walk

Don't miss Scott Kelby's Third Annual Worldwide Photo Walk this year, taking place on Saturday July 24th. Last year I got together with several other photographers in Tijuana and we had a great time. This year we're getting another dose of the same. Really looking forward to it.

Remember there's going to be prizes for the best images, so go out there and do your best. Take a look at the winning images from the previous two Photo Walks. There's some really great pictures in there.

See you out on the street.