This week I want to post ways that I think we need to use to always grow and improve as photographers. This first shot is an old railroad crane I shot on an overcast day at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Ga.
1. Stop posting on photography forums. Too many times when lots of photographers post to the same forum the work starts to look too much alike. We want to always strive to be fresh and different.
2. Begin looking at art sites more often. Don’t always just look at photography sites, spend more time looking at art in other mediums for inspiration.
3. Start going to more museums and traveling exhibits, this is another excellent way to get inspiration.
4. Read and look at classic and contemporary art books.
(The second shot above is a low, table level shot of Laotian Prayer Bowls I shot at the 2014 Laotian New Years celebration in Atlanta, Ga.)
5. Force yourself to use a different lens each time you shoot. Often we get stale in our photography if we use the same lens all the time as we tend to always shoot the same kind of stuff.
6. Purposely stop taking the same kinds of shots when out in the field, recognize your habits and try to break them.
7. Start personal art projects, even if they aren’t popular with others.
8. Keep your eye on new technology, software and hardware, even if it’s not directly photography related. There might be a way you can use this new tech in your art.
9. Use your smartphone as a whiteboard to spitball ideas and possibly catch ideas and subjects that maybe you had not thought of before.
10. Ask “what if ___?” a lot and try to use your curiosity to come up with fresh, new ideas and projects to shoot.
I, and many others, find lists like this a great way to keep our work fresh and new at all times. Sometimes as artists, we hit a rut and then have a hard time coming up with new ideas for our creative outlet. By keeping a list like this handy, hopefully, we can always continue to come up with new things to shoot and work on and always keep things fresh and new.