5 Simple Exercises to Get Out of a Creative Rut

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Are the winter blues getting your photography down? Are you feeling creatively blah? Do you feel uninspired? I know I sure am at the moment. And, I find this happens to me every winter so I am always looking for ways to get excited about shooting again and to help my feed my creative energy. I thought I would share five of my favorite, tried and true, ways to get me motivated and enthusiastic about shooting during these dreary months or, actually, anytime of the year. I hope they give you a bit of inspiration, too.

1.  Learn a new shooting or editing technique. There must be a technique you see other photographers use that makes you wonder, “How do they do that?” Now is your chance to figure that out. It doesn’t have to be something big; try something easy. Learn how to stop or capture motion or try shooting a long exposure. How about experimenting with nighttime or low light shooting? If you want to expand your editing skills, try creating clouds or fog in Photoshop and add them to an images or learn how to use a new tool in Lightroom and use it to edit an image. The possibilities are really endless.

For this image, I learned how to make rays of light.

2. Review some of your recent work. Pick three months from 2013 and review your unedited images from those months with a fresh eye. I promise you will find some of what I call “lemon to lemonade” images. These are images you first overlooked when you culled through them but, when you go back over them, they now stand out to you. There is just something about looking back with that fresh eye that unearths some really great images.

I “found” this image about 5 months after I took it.

3. Find a new, non-photography blog to follow for inspiration. Consider a food blog, a design blog, a travel blog or maybe a fashion blog. Pick one in any creative field but outside of the photography world. There is something about following other creatives, especially across different fields, which helps to revive and inspire your creative juices.

Here are a few of my favorites:

http://www.abeachcottage.com/blog (a décor and recipe blog)

http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com (a little bit of everything blog)

http://www.designsponge.com (you may know this one, but if you don’t you shouldn’t miss it)

4. Shoot everyday for a week. As a photographer who likes to plan their shoots, this is a hard one for me but, whenever I do it, I learn something about myself. It is a very freeing exercise and I somehow always manage to capture a really different, yet interesting image. If you are a great daily shooter, then try planning a shoot. Plan every detail from camera and lens choice to location, lighting and styling. Try this even if it is in your house with your children. You may come to love a styled shoot.

This was a completely spur of the moment shot. My oldest was home from college for a few days so I was carrying my camera everywhere we went.

5. Shoot images that are the opposite of what you traditionally shoot. Try it for a week (or longer). For example, if you mostly shoot/edit color images, shoot/edit for black and white images. If you are a portrait photographer, only shoot landscapes. If you love to shoot moody, dramatic images, shoot only joyful, happy ones. Or, if you are like me and tend to shoot controlled, planned images, only shoot lifestyle. You might not capture any portfolio worthy images but you will learn something in the process and, who knows, you might find a new passion. If nothing else, doing something completely opposite of how you traditionally shoot will give you an interesting perspective.

I decided to shoot all of my images for TPWP52’s A Year In Song with my iPhone. Quite a challenge for a planned shooter like me and, oh boy, am I learning a lot.

Happy shooting, everyone! And just remember, spring is around the corner.

Pam Korman

Pam began her photography journey in 2010 when she first picked up a DSLR. She is a dedicated hobbyist who enjoys shooting both digital and film and loves exploring a wide range of photographic subjects, techniques, cameras and lenses. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and three energetic teenagers. She happily admits to a coffee and chocolate chip cookie addiction and don’t be surprised if you get an email from her at 5 AM since she loves being up before the sun.

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