Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll

The Life of a Professional Photographer is really not unlike the life of anyone else. Oh sure, there is the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle but that is just part of the job. ( Kidding, I wish! ) I love what I do and feel blessed to do it. But like many occupations I can get uninspired at times and need to recharge the creative batteries as such. At these times I like to do something to get those creative juices flowing again. One of the methods I use is to just take my camera everywhere and try different techniques to everyday scenes. I’ll take one lens, usually my trusted 50mm f/1.8 and just try to capture a place in as many ways as I can come up with. I get down low, up high, close and far away. I’ll use really shallow depth of field to isolate and emphasis a part of the scene. Get real close and shoot in a way that disguises what I am looking at. I will use framing devices from a scene; windows, branches, pipes anything I can use to some up with something different. I’ll look for repeating patterns. I’ll look at unusual angles for everyday objects. Shooting a staircase for example in a way that you can’t tell if you are looking from the bottom up or from above. I’ll look for collection of objects like bottles, corks or candles for examples. Bike spokes. The list is endless. With digital capture it is so easy and costless to try new things and with the instant feedback one can see if that idea “worked” or not. Or even tweak your cameras settings to further work an idea. Changing shutter speeds, DOF or ISO and see the result. When your creativity’s at a low ebb, give one of these a try and get your Mojo back!!