Expanding Your Horizons
By Jeff Timmons
29 May 2008
Do you ever get stuck? Can't figure out exactly what to shoot next? Just seem to get stuck in a rut and can't get out of it?
I have been there. Doing tabletop photography can put one in a very static situation. Take an apple, put the apple on the table, set up the lights, adjust the apple, set focus and aperture, take the shot, zoom in, take another shot . . . . It is easy to get lost in the details. The creative juices dry up. We focus on one thing and ignore everything else.
So what do you do? Try looking around you. Change your environment. If you shoot outside, go inside. If you shoot people, try shooting landscapes. If you shoot architectural, try shooting a macro. But the first thing you have to do is take yourself outside of your "comfort zone".
Therein lies the secret. We spend so much time running around in our busy lives that far too often we simply do what we know how to do because it is easy. But it tends to stifle the ideas we might otherwise have.
So where does one look to find ideas? It can be within eyesight. Or it can be within earshot. Pick up a book and read. Watch a movie. Ask people you know what they are interested in.
Many of my best ideas involve visualizing common sayings or trying to recreate something I've seen in a movie. Maybe not exactly, but using it as a guideline. I always keep myself open to shooting different things. I've shot with amateur models, I've shot tabletop, I've shot nature and landscapes, and I've shot art.
Why shoot all those different styles? It keeps things fresh and alive. It teaches different techniques that eventually begin to mesh throughout your photography. It creates individuality within your photographic styles.
Now I've looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of "professional" portfolios. Most of these photographers are niche photographers. They shoot one type of photographic subject and that is it. They make decent money at it, but after one has looked at a hundred or two hundred of their photos, they begin to look the same.
Conversely, there are those rare photographers who shoot different styles and sometimes their photos work, and sometimes they don't. But when they do work, it is an amazing thing. The visions they create are stunning, beautiful, unique, and wonderful.
So, when you start to feel a bit bored, do not go back and do the "same old thing". Go somewhere else, do something you've never done before. Shoot macros and architecture and people and animals and landscapes. What you will find is an exciting new photographic world with possibilities you never even knew existed.
