Three Exercises to Improve Your Creativity
November 12, 2014
When you’re feeling uninspired, trying something different is the best way to snap out of it.
When you’re feeling uninspired and you’ve run out of ideas, taking on a new challenge and trying something different is one of the best ways to snap out of it. There are many things you can do to re-charge your creativity and most of them are fairly simple. Creativity is something you can develop through practice and experimentation. We’ve compiled a list three quick and easy things to try.
1. Try a completely different kind of photography.
If you usually shoot landscapes, try doing nature macros instead. If you would normally photograph people, try landscapes. You get the idea. The point is to do something that you’ve never done before.
2. Stay at home or close to home.
If you really look around, you’ll probably see all sorts of interesting things to photograph. We often think that in order to get great pictures we have to go somewhere exotic, but the truth is there are always interesting things nearby if we take the time to stop around and look.
3. Look for something specific.
Pick a theme like patterns, a shape (like circles) or a color (like red) and photograph only that one thing for one day. When you are focused on finding one thing, you’ll likely find lots of it and you can really push your creative boundaries.
As you may have noticed, all of these exercises are about seeing more than they are about shooting. Because that’s one of the most important things you can do to improve your photography is improve how you see the world around you. As photographers, it’s easy to stick with what we know and remain in our comfort zone. As people, we often grow accustomed to, and ignore, our environment. But that environment is full of photographic inspiration. Give one of these a try and let us know what you think!
