10 ways to break photographer’s block
As a writer, I know the feeling all too well – with a sense of dread and a deep sense of apathy, I stare at the blinking cursor and the completely blank TextMate document. I have ten thousand thoughts and feelings and stories that are chomping at the bit to get told, but it’s just so difficult to get started… And the exact same thing can happen to me when I’m taking photos.
So… What can you do to get out there and beat photographer’s block? What can you do when your camera’s batteries are charged, your memory card is fresh, the weather is fabulous, and the light is reflecting tantalizingly off your expensive glass lenses, but your inspiration is just kicking it on a rocking chair on the porch with a cold ice tea, like a metaphor stretched to well beyond the sensible breaking point?
Fear ye not, my photo siblings… Here’s my Top 10 tips to breaking the photographers’ block (or: Ideas for an uninspired photographer)
1. The 100 step challenge
The 100 step challenge is one I’ve promoted here on Photocritic before – because it’s one of those things I’ve found work incredibly well indeed. It’s easy: Grab your camera, and start walking. Count your steps. After 100 steps, stop where you are, and where you’re standing, you have to take a photograph.
“But there won’t be anything there”, I hear you cry. Well, yes, but that’s the point. The idea behind the 100 step challenge is to force yourself to see scenes and to create pictures even if there’s nothing there to be seen. It’s kind of like free association writing, where you just start writing, and keep your hand moving even if you have nothing to say – sometimes, the greatest things are created when you’ve run out of things to say.
Even if you don’t get a single good photo out of your 100-step challenge, you’ll have had a nice walk out of it, right?
2. Recreate a photograph you love
Everyone has a photo that they really like. Hopefully, you’ve got a few hundred photos in mind – think about the great photographers who’ve lived before you, and pick one of their photos. Then go ahead and copy it – sure, it’ll be plagiarism, but you’ll learn something in the meantime.
The photo on the right is Still waiting (Yorgos III), from my Flickr stream. Click on it to see it bigger.
3. Learn from the greats
Only in the last few weeks, I’ve written about The top 50 photography websites and 50 amazing flickr streams. That’s 100 URLs worth of inspiration. Pick one at random, study their style, and either recreate one of their photos, or use the observations you’ve learned about style to create a photograph in a similar style.
Flickr especially tends to be open to questions, so if you’re struggling to recreate a style or a ‘feel’ – go ahead and post your best try to Flickr, and ask the photographer whose work you’re imitating where you went wrong…
4. Self Portraiture
The only model you’ll have consistently available is yourself – go ahead, do something awesome. Use make-up if you don’t usually use make-up. Wear girl’s clothes if you’re a boy, or vice-versa. Try to make a recognisable portrait of yourself without showing your face. Go crazy – here’s some inspiration.
Photo on the right: Self portrait sans self
5. Rapid Fire
120 minutes – 120 different photos. Related to the 100 step challenge, but more hectic. This works well with street photography especially – go ahead, shoot first and ask questions later. You may end up with 120 duds, of course, but hell, it’s a lot of fun to come up with them anyway, right?
6. Play the Random game
Play the Random Game – which you do by calling up a Wordsmith random word of the day. That’s the word you have to try to illustrate with a photograph.
If you’re struggling, plug the word into Google Image Search. If it comes up with something, then go ahead and try to copy it!
Bonus challenge: As I was writing this, the word that came up randomly was Bloviate. Illustrate that :)
7. Flickr’s Interestingness
This is Skatezophrenia, from my Flickr stream. Click on it to see it bigger.
I keep telling people this, but if you manage to stay uninspired even after browsing Flickr’s Interesting in the last 7 days for half an hour, you may as well hang up your photographic spurs.
If you want to continue exploring, find the Flickr name of a photographer you admire (or one you’ve just discovered), and plug their name into the Flickr Scout tool from Big Huge Labs, sorting by Best Position – that’ll list a users ‘most interesting’ photos – a great way to get an introduction to a user’s most popular photographic work.
8. Try something new
Photography generally comes in a ton of genres, and I bet you a lot of money that you’re not as conversant in all of them. So why not try to work on improving your work in one genre? For me personally, portraiture really clicked after I had done a load of animal and live band photography.
Not convinced? Well, then… Have you tried panoramas (see CleVR)? HDR (see our guide / HDR on Flickr)? Portraiture (see “Portraiture: Borrow their soul!” and Do It Yourself: Build A 1600W Studio Broadlight at Shutterbug)? Nude photography (see Renoux’ work and my own Nude photography 101: Photographing your girlfriend)? Macro photography (on Flickr)? Long exposure photography (on Flickr)? Photojournalistic photography? Astrophotography (on Flickr)? Street or candid photography (on Flickr, Wikipedia and Photo.net’s guide)? Paperazzi-style photography? Food photography (for all the icky tricks, read my article)? War photography (my modest contribution can be found in this Flickr set)? Kite aerial photography? Lomography? Night photography? Infrared photography? The list is long, and this is only a small sample…
Surely, there’s one style or another where you feel that perhaps you could try it again, and improve a little?
Photo: Lamb of God at Sonisphere
9. Don’t take any photos
Perhaps if you don’t feel like taking photos, it means that you’re not ready to take any photos. Hey, it could happen. Dig out your library, see if there’s any of your photos you’ve missed. Re-edit some photo sets. Re-upload some of your photos to Flickr, and see if you can’t get some inspiration from your old work.
10. Stop procrastinating
What are you doing reading these guides on the internet anyway? Grab your camera, get out there, do stuff. Stop moaning. No, seriously, outside. Or inside, for that matter. Just do it already!
11. Help your fellow photographers
Do you have something that breaks you out of a rotten spell of photography block every time? Or even just some of the time? Or perhaps just once? The tips above do it for me every time (especially 7, 5 and 2, to be honest, but I guess it’s more important to find something that works for you)… Go on, leave a comment and tell us how you broke your dry spell!
Hat tip to @karbassi on Twitter for the idea for this article! Also, I’m still on @photocritic :)
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Insights, suggestions and comments
Awesome ideas for breaking out of the duldrums. Although I’ve been more of an editor-writer over the past 30 years, I have been involved with photography (camera, darkroom, digital, and software) for most of those years as well. As a newspaper photographer, I frequently had to get shots that would attract attention to the front page. Ideas like those you’ve just presented are what I could have used then.
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Thanx! Great article, great tips :) I think I should take my camera with me more often…
Find an old picture of your city then try to go and take the exact same picture from the same spot. Really cool if your reference picture is a few decades old
very inspiring…thanks!!
Take a single object, and do a photo study of it. You’d be surprised by what photos you can get of something like a fork or a tea cup!
I like this “Perhaps if you don’t feel like taking photos, it means that you’re not ready to take any photos. Hey, it could happen. Dig out your library, see if there’s any of your photos you’ve missed.”
Great tips.
I especially like the 100 step challenge. And oddly enough I do have a photo that would illustrate bloviate.
CGW – you should totally post a link to that photo, I’d love to see it :)
Wow! Completely simple ideas but oh so very true! I’ve definitely been having photographers block lately even though i have all these ideas racing around my mind. time to get some of them out!!! :-) thanks for your advice!
Robert Frank shot 25,000 images and culled them down to 83 for The Americans-in photo school you learn the lesson-shoot, shoot,shoot. This philosophy has its limits in terms of modern day Photoshop stuff but is still essentially sound. Shoot.
eheh, inspiring article. Thank you.
Great tips! greatly needed at times. I hate when I get the block
going through other photographer’s work usually inspires me, but the one thing I think I get the most ideas from is music videos. may sound weird, especially since MTV never shows them. but if you have kids, I have a little boy named Jackson, than you can catch a few in the early morning on VH1 and MTV. most are shot in a way that tells you a story, but really quick. I find that most of the concepts would be great ideas for shoots. try it out, see what you think:) xoCarrie
Drive to the middle of nowhere. Get out of your car, taking your camera and cellphone with you. Make sure your cell phone ‘hits’ service. Hold your breath and lock your keys in the car.
In the FOUR hours or so it takes for the locksmith to find you… shoot a billion pictures. watch the light change. llok for interesting lines. pee behind a bush. shoot a billion more pictures.
My ‘research’ into this tip cost me $100 bucks, but seriously, i learned there’s always a shot near you – just sloooooooow down. wait for it.
Also – take snacks.
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I thought you were going to take this to one of the Best ways to break the block that I know of, Haje… with #11.
The title was right, anyway; “Help your fellow photographer”
From my teaching days, I know that helping someone else solve a problem or break Their block gets me right past my own block. Not so easy with writing, maybe, but with photography and software edits, cellphones, internet video chats, all Sorts of media connectivity, even if I can’t physically join someone, I can at Least encourage, cajole, challenge, playfully deride, punk, admire, improv, etc someone about Their pictures. That way I pretty much need to get off my butt to Have that conversation.
The Win-Win is that, in order to expect Them to get moving on something (even if it’s “wrong”), I have to be willing to do the same, and by declaring what I’m up to, I’ve activated an expectation that it Will happen. Sometimes that is All it Takes.
Hey, even if I and the other person agree to flip a coin on some random idea, even if that doesn’t work, sometimes by choosing Not to do one thing, another comes up to replace it that I Would want to do.
Thanks for this. We enjoyed it so much we linked to it from my blog this week. I hope many get to read this these dog days of summer.
Awesome! And thanks!
I’ve recently started a “365″ project – taking at least one photo every day. The interesting thing about that is that you are always on the lookout for a new shot so you don’t keep using the same theme/subject/lighting e.t.c.
This is helpful. I found your site thru a strobist discussion and will add it to my bookmarks. The encouragement to do self portraits is such a great thing! My daughter is doing that for her 365 project and is really growing as a photographer. Here is her latest. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sammysaur/3836493076/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25297105@N06/ –
I really like your ten tips, very well thought out. I’ll definitely keep them for future reference. I like your site and now have bookmarked it.
I use one, a bit like #6, I randomly chose a letter or a number (A,B or 1, 2) and go out and look for it (10 of them). In a tree, in a cloud, in a building, in a corner, anywhere! Try it, go look for 10 pictures that include the letter A.
The Worst and Most Expensive Way to Break the Block:
Buy new lenses.
It works, most of the time, but I’ve always found it to be expensive. I only mention it to prove that Tom’s advice (March 2,2009) to lock- yourself-out-of-your-car-miles-from-a-locksmith is not a bad option.
Nice article. Your writing is fun to read.
Some great ideas. I especially liked the one about recreating a photo I love. Good advice.
You know that random word game? If you thought Bloviate was bad my random word was extramundane – Not of the physical world.
Self Portraiture- I do agree!Photography really kills boredom especially when we make our self the model, discovering what angle we looks pretty cool.
Thanks for the tips!!! I’ve been getting bored of taking pictures and its hurting me very bad. but i realize that is because ive been taking the same pictures over and over and over. I’ll try these tips and see if I still got it!!
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