When I want to take photos for my personal benefit and enjoyment, as opposed to photography work I’m hired to do, I always find myself wishing I was on my way to the Grand Canyon or the Alps, or something grandiose that would make taking images so easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. But the reality is, I never find myself en route to the Grand Canyon, and I ought not to stop taking pictures just because I’m stuck at home and have to work tomorrow. So if you want to push your photography game without traveling to foreign lands, here are a few ideas that I use when I am in a bit of a rut.
Before the ideas commence, though, consider this bit of philosophy on being stuck in the “same old place” place to take photos: I gave students a writing prompt a few years back, it was a creative writing piece, funny, very short, but it culminated with a cheeseburger influencing the story somehow. I had a handful of students balk at it – they whined, “how is it creative if you’re making us write about a cheeseburger?” and I responded that that was exactly the reason. I didn’t give them a problem to overcome to limit their creativity, I gave them a complicated, odd thing, to stick in their story and they had to problem-solve their way out of it….creatively! If I had said “Write a creative piece, anything you want. Go.” They surely would have had an easier time, but they would have had to be far less creative in accomplishing it. If “necessity is the mother of invention,” then having a problem to fix is a blessing and not a curse. Enough proselytizing, on to the ideas.
Tell a story with an inanimate object as a “main character.”
Take anything around, something mundane, like a potato chip, an action figure, or a piece of fruit, or even another photograph, and make it the main character of a story. Doesn’t matter what story, but make it the main character and present it with a problem that would be unique to its essence. For food, being eaten or spoiling are probably solid choices, or being cut up, maybe. For an action figure, maybe there’s an arch enemy, or maybe your child is the enemy from the perspective of the toy (think Sid from ToyStory). What you’re getting into here is to see things in a way unlike the way you normally see them, and that is by way of inventing a story that’s not the same story they exist in normally. Get fantastic with this, it could be very visually interesting!
Look for negative spaces
Don’t just look at the things in your location, look at the space around those things. Does it have any defined shape? Any visual value? It’s a process of not looking at what you normally look at, but seeing those things and then choosing to look past them. So for this one, pick the most obvious of things: a ceiling fan, a refrigerator, a couch pillow, a mug. Whatever is around, but choose to visually value the space around it even more, and you may unearth some instances of interesting negative space.
Make a collection
This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while but haven’t made the time. Once upon a time, I was applying to art school with a portfolio and one of the things they requested was that the portfolios show a commitment to one particular subject or style. They wanted to see that applicants had a refined interest in something rather than a little bit of everything. So think of similarly-themed things that exist around you, like a variety of shirt buttons in your closet, or different types of doorknobs in your office space, or found letters (things that aren’t letters but look like them if you take them out of context, like a tire looking like an “O”) and make 10 or 15 images of virtually the same thing, but in slight variations. This is good practice on the road to making your eye more discerning of your surroundings and the nuances that exist in details.
Convey a concept (silence, chaos, attraction)
This could be similar to the story idea, but it’s a little more abstract. Instead of taking a specific object and giving it a story, this is more like a scene that conveys a feeling or aura. Any one will do, I’ve listed three above, but think big picture first and then narrow it down. Big picture looks like “good,” “bad,” “ugly,” “pretty” more narrow ideas look like “the sadness of losing a friend” or “the fallout of a divorce.” Not intentionally being emo, here, but an idea like “the joy of wearing pajamas all day” probably won’t carry the same kind of tension.
Take a self-portrait
Do this because you hate it. 🙂 But seriously, you’re always behind the camera, there’s a solid chance, if you’re like me, that you rarely find yourself in front of it. I don’t hate having my picture taken at all, I’m just always the one chosen for the task of being behind it, so i don’t have as many pictures of me as I do of other people. A self-portrait can be a great opportunity to be yourself, or to be highly unlike yourself, too. Sky is the limit on this one and the reason I like this suggestion so much, is that when I have done it, it has made me both highly critical of my work and my very self. These are good things that push my limits as a photographer and as a person, and I find it to be a fruitful experience, even and especially when I don’t come out with an image that I like.
So take these suggestions and run with them, I think they can break you out of the monotony in no time at all, and hopefully they will help you develop skills of seeing the world around you differently so that you can take and build on those skills and come to use them no matter where you are shooting.
For other kinds of variety within the context of a photoshoot, check out this article.
