First off, I'm not a professional photographer. I would consider myself to be a serious amatuer at this point, but I am starting school soon as a student of fine arts with photography obviously being a focus.

Lately I have been feeling extremely uninspired to shoot, I recently sold my smaller DSLR in favor of a D300, bought some nice glass, went on a shooting rampage and the pictures never even made it to PP. I have a 4g cf flash card completely full of images that I havent had the time to even touch yet.


What are some things that you fellas do to spark interest again to get out of these slumps? Travel? cruise flickr? pickup an issue of popular photography?

 

Risk taking.

Shoot whatever you like shooting, in a different way. It's harder with landscapes (some of your landscapes are very nice) and maybe it's just not my niche, but what I found to kick me out of slumps was to just take huge risks in my shoots.

Especially when you're not shooting for anyone but yourself, best time to do it.

Shooting a different genre would be a nice change too.

 

sounds like some good advice!!

 

Jump out of your comfort zone. If you do landscapes spend a week doing people shots. Go out of your comfort zone. First you will not be comfortable and second you will need to concentrate on what you are doing.

Give it a try but get out of your box

 

Well, I went out to shoot and atleast got inspired to shoot more now. I did however realize a few things...

1. My monitor either needs calibrated or this one at work does, because this is a touch under at work, but at home looks fine.

2. Barrel distortion on this lens, I tried to correct in PS, and couldnt get it to look right with this particular photo.

3. It just looks blah, this 18-135 is currently the widest lens I have, I sold my other and its sharpness is just not there, I'm finding ways to help it along but its just not good enough.

 

all photographers come to a 'writer's block'. this doesn't mean you have completely lost your interest...

I hit this 'writer's block' 6 months after I started photography school, I really wanted to just give up and drop out. I was just so burnt out from non-stop shooting and studying photography that I couldn't think or figure out what I wanted to shoot. I went thru this for 2 months before I snapped out of it. I basically took a break and stopped thinking about photography for 2 weeks. I skipped class and just laid low until I had the itch. Not sure if this will work for you or anyone else but it did for me.

another thing that helped me was to look at other photogs work for inspiration. some photogs are too proud or thinks it wack too look at other photogs for inspiration but you have to have an open mind. there are a lot of great photos out there that will stir up your interest again and make you want to achieve that.

I hope you don't give up and get back to shooting asap!

 

1. don't worry about that. its always going to look different on different monitors.
worry about getting the message across within your photo.

2. lens flaw is minor detail that you don't need to get burnt out about.

3. I think this photo is not 'blah' 18-135 is a good lens. don't get your photography skills mixed up with photography equipments.


the photo is interesting to me. you know what would be more interesting? if you cropped off bottom portion of the image so the attention goes to the upper half.
you have nice vantge point looking up yet the leading lines play well together.


occam's razor, slice out anything that doesn't add to your image.

 

competition is my wonder drug. i shoot with a bunch of guys and we're always trying to out-do each other. like for instance, i might not shoot anything interesting for weeks but then someone posts something up on the flickr group and it looks amazing, we all saddle up and go out to try and one up that person. its a vicious but productive cycle. the last arms war we got into ended up costing the winner about $7k's worth of lenses. hahahaha.

 

^ you dont need anything near $7k in lenses to make stellar photographs one upping or not.

 

nuff said.

seriously must be loaded to be having photo contest between friends for the amount of $7k worth of lenses...and how do you judge if all your friends are competing.