Anyone who has pursued photography as either a hobby or a profession knows the single greatest challenge is inspiration: What to photograph. Whether you’re planning to share your photos online, keep them in a private book, or display them on your walls as a canvas print collection, every photographer at every level has had rough days where they simply can’t seem to get any inspiration.
Sometimes you have to try different things or look at the world in a different way to break out of patterns and limitation you might not even be consciously aware of. Sometimes the patterns that have locked you into boring, well-trodden ideas are nearly invisible to yourself, and it takes literally changing up your perspective to see new lands to explore. Here are some great, easy ways to try something different and see your corner of the world in a new way.
Canvas Print Inspiration: Change Time, Not Location
The default setting when searching out new subjects for our photography tends to be changing our location: We pack up our gear and head out to some place new, some place we’ve never seen before, and look for inspiration. And it usually works! Except, of course, when it doesn’t.
When a new location doesn’t get the juices flowing, try this: Take a photo of a single place, every day, at a different time. Make it a long-term project and time it out by minutes, or a smaller scale and show up at a different hour until you’ve covered all 24 possibilities. The trick here is that you’re forcing yourself to view the same scene where only invisible, intangible things have changed – like time, and light and shadows, and your mood and state of mind. It forces you to see things in a wholly new way.
The Casual Still Life
Many amateur photographers get caught up in the belief that photographs have to be dynamic and exciting – they must depict something in motion, or a moment in time where action is frozen at its most thrilling point. The idea of simply photographing ‘things’ seems ridiculous, but a still life persists as a popular technique for a reason.
The trick is to find the drama in a moment when the action is finished. For example, imagine a demonstration in the streets, but instead of making a canvas print of an image of the protesters and the smoke and the police, you photograph the trampled signs and debris left behind – it can be just as powerful, if not more so.
You may not have any protests in your house or around it (not counting children refusing to go to bed at night) but your home and its surroundings no doubt has plenty of these still life scenes that show the powerful absence of people. It’s a change from portraits and action scenes that can force your brain to completely reset its creative perspective, usually to very powerful effect.
The thread in these suggestions is change: Changing the way you approach your art and your hobby or profession. Think about how you usually do things – and then simply do it a different way. If you don’t like it, you can always switch back, after all.
When you’ve used these techniques to create something amazing, click here and we’ll be happy to turn them into awesome wall art so you can show the world what you’ve created.
