The other day I received a phone call from my friend Stephen. He was just calling to check in and see how I was doing, as we haven’t spoken in a while. He’s usually very busy on the weekend and I’m home only on the weekends, now.
After a bit of small talk, he asked me a question similar to this:
I’ve visited this park about a million times with my camera and I’m getting bored with it. Do you ever get bored shooting the same place over and over again?
I answered in the affirmative. Sometimes, I do get bored. He then asked what do I do about it? Well, that one is fairly easy. I have about 3 places that I shoot regularly. If I get bored or uninspired with one, I’ll move to one of the other two. Also, depending on the weather, I’ll do one place or the other. For example, one of places is the Van Landingham Glen. If it is drizzling outside, that’s my favorite place to go because there are so many trees, a small stream, and lots of plants that look really nice in the rain. Reedy Creek, on the other hand, is my favorite place to go when it’s foggy outside.
Sometimes, a change of lens is all that is needed. I find that when I am bored with the big picture, so to speak, coming in close, sometimes to macro level, is the ideal elixir to cure what ails me. Other times, I just need to stay away from that place for a while so that I start to miss it and see it with new eyes. Things change frequently such as wind, sunlight intensity, sunlight quality/color, etc. Sometimes I like to go to the garden on a windy day and let the pictures paint themselves using ND (Neutral Density) filters and long shutter speeds, other times multiple exposures, rarely, The Lensbaby. Yet, other times, I try to look for a different perspective, paying attention to things that I might not normally consider. This can be anything from doorways to trashcans.
Lastly, sometimes I don’t go at all because, quite frankly, I’m not in the mood.
So, those are some of the things that I do? What about you? What do you do to make an area ‘fresh’ again?
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4 Responses to “Do you get bored?”
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Yea, I sometimes get bored or have a “photographers block” and I approach it the same way as you do. I’ll either take a little time off or change things up to generate new interest and excitement. So far the excitement has always come back.
I think it is only natural and a sign to try someplace new for awhile. After some time away, I often come back to the same places and discover something completely new.
If you have a truly beautiful place to which you have an intimate relation, there’s one simply cure (for me at least): Don’t take your camera with you for a couple of visits. At the latest after the second time without a camera I start seeing new things and become eager to shot there again…
Basically I do what you do: use different places from a set that I know well, choose different ways from home to work and back, and probably the most important push to creativity, I change lenses. Normally I stick to a particular lens for weeks, sometimes months, like I did most of last fall and early winter with the Sigma 50/1.4. Some weeks ago I suddenly wanted a wider angle, and since then I use the Sigma 20/1.8.
Additionally I have a set of lenses that I always carry to Carinthia for the weekend (10-20, 18-200, 70-300, 50/1.8) and a set that is always in my bag in Vienna (10.5 fisheye, 20/1.8, 30/1.4, 50/1.4, 70/2.8 and 85/1.8, Lensbaby). Any one of the primes is normally the prime of choice, and that’s on the camera almost all of the time, even in Carinthia.
Thus you can permute places and lenses for quite some time until you run out of options