Sunday, April 10, 2011

Shaking things up

click photo to enlarge
I haven't been especially happy with my recent photographic output. Competent is the best I can come up with to describe it. One or two, maybe, stand a little higher than that, but overall I think I'm on something of a plateau of "very averageness".

I've been here before. Inspiration is lacking, the eye doesn't see in the way that it did, and there is a dearth of shots with which you're very pleased. In fact, my typical output consists of a lot of OK stuff, a few dire shots, and a few that stand out for me. And it's those "stand outs" that keep you clicking, keep you searching for the next one. When you don't get them no amount of OK photographs can compensate. What to do? Well, my usual technique is to snap my way through the drought - keep photographing, and gradually things do pick up again. Something else I've tried is giving myself a challenge. For example, produce a good photograph from a particular subject, or work only in one way - such as, just black and white, only using a macro lens, or using a very shallow depth of field.

It was the last one that I turned to on this occasion, though I also decided to accentuate colour (thinking about the most recent post), and aimed for a semi-abstract effect. The subject I chose was a multicoloured, multi-flowered,  Mothers' Day bouquet that one of my sons bought for my wife. It isn't the greatest shot I've produced, but maybe it will shake things up and help me climb out of my photographic trough.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off