Seven Things To Freshen Up Your Photographic Eye
by Scott Bourne
Okay time to shake it up a bit folks. You’ve been shooting the same thing over and over and your images are all starting to look the same. Time to stir up the creative juices. Every once in a while I come up with a post like this for myself as much as for anyone else, so let’s try it together. Here are seven things that may freshen up your photographic eye.
1. Shoot with a speciality lens. Try a fisheye, a Lensbaby, a tilt-shift, a pinhole or just a classic manual lens.
2. Go out shooting strictly for a personal project. I don’t care if its the plight of the homeless, the oil spill in the Gulf, a wedding or a fine art project. Get focused on ONE idea and pursue it. Make sure it’s different from what you typically shoot.
3. Close your eyes, reach into your camera bag and grab a lens. Force yourself to shoot ONLY with that lens for an entire day.
4. If you usually shoot with a tripod, spend a day shooting WITHOUT a tripod. Conversely, if you usually shoot hand-held, spend a day shooting exclusively on a tripod.
5. Try your hand at manual focusing for an entire day.
6. Think about a theme, a concept or a story if you will and go out to illustrate that.
7. Spend a day shooting WITHOUT your camera. Go to the places you would normally shoot, pretend you have a camera and practice looking for the light, the right background and the right framing. Then go back and do it for real.
first, buy camera that can fit specialty lens or different lens that can be manually focused. just joking, good ides all of them. I find that just shooting in B&W really changes what I look at too.
I will try all for sure.