Trying to improve my images and create photos that have an original feel to them.

So my question is, how do you push yourself in new creative directions? What do you do when your images start to feel a little stale, like you've see it before?

I'm interested in your thought process when you got out to make photos and how you push yourself to do your best work.

thanks,

-- Mark (acerview76eus@yahoo.com), March 05, 2002

Answers

Of course with your Leica (M or R)!

-- Mark (acerview76eus@yahoo.com), March 05, 2002.

Take on a big project about something that touches you as a human being. See yourself through the eyes of a humanist. Also, make sure the roadblocks to successful completion appear almost insurmountable (ie shooting the whole project with a 50 mm lens). I think you will find that creative solutions are often sired by compromise.

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), March 05, 2002.

A great question from Mark and a great answer from John.

Other things to do:

Give yourself specific, often goofy, shooting assignments as if you are a student in a photography program.

Shoot with some different equipment (e.g., try medium format if you have never used it) or different lenses (use a 28 mm is you usually shoot with the 50 or the 90).

Shoot landscapes if you have been a people photographer, or people if you have been a landscape photographer.

Doing just about anything to incovenience your imagination will lead you in new directions. The hard part is disciplining yourself not to take the easy routes.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), March 05, 2002.

take a trip. speak to people that you never spoken to. keep a note pad/pencil w/ you (alt. digital voice recorder) to jolt down ideas on your commute, in bed, doing gardeing work - wherever.

or just stop taking pictures for a while to see if the inspiration comes back (i know, drastic)

read style of book you usually don't read, see a film that doesn't speak to you, take a art class.

i'm sure you'll think of something

cheers,

-- pat (modlabs@yahoo.com), March 05, 2002.

My answer might be too much on the technical side and too little on the aesthetic side but it helps me gauge my progress.

When I first started shooting live dance, I would blanket a two hour concert using as much as 12 rolls of film. I would be pleased if I had 1-2 usable photos from each roll.

By usable, I mean properly exposed (constantly changing lighting situations and low-light situations are tough) and focused images.

Over time, my roll usage has diminished and my usable shots per roll increased.

Now, I shoot a two hour concet with two rolls of film, one per half, changing rolls at intermission. Out of 72 shots, I usually walk away with 30 shots that I consider usable and that clients are happy to pay for.

Of course, this doesn't mean I come away with 30 absolute gems. But in that regard, I'm getting better. I would judge a gem as a shot that absolutely captured the essence of the moment, that gave a viewer a sense of being there. This of course is pretty subjective.

So maybe out of 72 shots, I have 10 that I would be willing to exhibit.

Anyway, that's how I push myself, but trying to get that ratio of photos kept to film shot down.

-- victor (danzfotog@yahoo.com), March 05, 2002.

Mark, Here's a thought that recently worked for me. I took on a photo assignment for a group of performers I saw at at very bizarre' Halloween Rave last year. They're called "Firefabulon". They couldn't afford me so I traded photography, (which they badly needed for promotion) for a performance at one of my parties. It got me out of myself and into a photo essay about them. Thinking outward not inward, resulted in some of the best work I've done in years. And the look on their faces when they got their prints was even more inspiring. Marc Williams

-- Marc Williams (mwilliams111313MI@comcast.net), March 05, 2002.

One technique might be to spend a week in a sweat lodge. Water, but no food. Sometime during the fourth day, you'll start to hallucinate. While in that state, think about what you want your images to say, and how you want to say it. Write those things down, because you may not remember them later. Be sure to use water-proof ink.

After you get out of the swear lodge, see if you can actually read the stuff you wrote down while in a trance. If not, go with the other suggestions and just do something different than you are accustomed to doing. But, you can do it with greater confidence, because you'll be 50 pounds lighter, and able to scale tall mountains (or, buildings) with your whole Leica kit slung over your shoulder. ;-)

Seriously, I think its a matter of breaking patterns to get the juices flowing again. Introspection about your style and how you see life in general, and how to translate that into your photography, help as well. It's mostly a matter of pushing yourself out of whatever rut you happen to be in, though, I think.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), March 05, 2002.

Hi, Mark:

Good question. Maybe most of us at some time feel that we are doing nothing really worth the effort. When it happens to me I look at photos of great masters: HCB and Helmut Newton, in the first place.

No matter how many times I have seen those photos I still find something else to get insterested about. And now, Internet puts much more examples of good photography at our reach than we could buy in books with all the money we could have available for it.

That, for motivation sources. Regarding thinking it gets tougher to explain; it has to deal with concepts and I feel that I can be photographing for years around a given concept and still not be really aware of what it is. But when you finally decipher your own thinking (in my case, mainly because a specially well achieved image makes it evident) you can continue trying to get photos that faithfully represent that concept and never get satisfied. I have identified some few concepts this kind that are strong motivations of my photography: lonelyness (mainly in big cities) time going by light (it is one of the most intriguing things I can think of) portraiture (I mean being able to concentrate somebody's moods / character in a single shot) communication (or the lack of it)

aside from more incidental topics like architecture and single objects or odd angles of rather familiar images

Mark (and everybody else for that matter)I know this is kind of a presumptuous exhibition and I've been laughing at myself since a while ago but still it intends to be a honest answer to your question.

And then . . . this a photography site, isn't it ?

Regards

-Iván

-- Iván Barrientos M (ingenieria@simltda.tie.cl), March 05, 2002.

Stop trying to be original and don't worry about taking great photos, just spend a lot of time (and try to take as much joy as possible in) photographing whatever interests you. And learn to live with the fact that you'll face times when everything you've done looks like the same old crap; don't be discouraged, just push on through.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), March 06, 2002.

Take the day off, buy some sandwiches, drink, notebook and pen. Go to the biggest book shop you can find. Pull up a chair or find some floor space. Look through every photobook. Take notes (and mental ones to) of every image that appeals to your taste. Go away and think about what you experianced during the day. You will find a subject/style that gets you excited....shoot it....

-- Stewart Weir (weirs99@aol.com), March 06, 2002.

Use a Leica O.

You will get images like you have never seen before !

-- Yip (koklok@lit.org.sg), March 07, 2002.

>Use a Leica O

Or a Lomo...:-)

I agree with the own assignments. I just took one to go to Istanbul and see if I can show the diffrences between traditional and modern there. Should be a great city for it.

Also I recommend to sit on a spot for a while and not wander around in the desperate seach to find a nice shot. If you stick where you are, it will come to you (Ofcourse not valid for landscape photography :-)). Just make sure you 'background' is not disturbing.

-- ReinierV (rvlaam@xs4all.nl), March 07, 2002.

A common advice to writers who are stuck, is to write anything down without thinking -stream of conciousness. I find that a similar process can be applied in photography. If I feel stuck, I grab my Lomo camera and point it just about anywhere.

The point is to let your intuition rule, rather than the analytic part of the brain. The results are not something you are likely to want to show other people, but it can teach you a lot about yourself and how you see things.

Even if you feel these photographs were taken in random, it is still *you* who choose to point the camera at that specific motif (out of a indefinite number of possible subjects/angles etc.). Among the results there are likely to be some which will inspire to try out something new.

I prefer to use a different camera than my usual one for this excercise because it frees me from my conventional thinking.

-- Niels H. S. Nielsen (nhsn@ruc.dk), March 07, 2002.

Excellent answers.

Best advice I've gotten on this subject was from my friend who is a musician and songwriter. Stop worrying about trying to take a "good" picture.

Basically, anything that gets you working intuitively and not thinking about it will help.

-- Steven Hupp (shupp@chicagobotanic.org), March 07, 2002.