Writer’s have it so why can’t photographers? When you are new to photography, or have just bought a fancy new camera, there comes a point when you think “I want to do some photography, but I just don’t know what to take pictures of!”. Maybe the weather is rubbish, maybe you have some time off work or school, but you just can’t get inspiration. So what do you do?
Well, for me, I look at other people’s work to see how other people view different things. I usually do this on the internet, or sometimes I thumb through several photography books I have. Web sites are easiest though as there are so many of them. Being a Flickr user, I use the “Last 7 Days of Interestingness” and see what photos have been popular. Photo communities like Photo.net are also good to see what other people have been doing photographically too.
Another thing to do is set yourself a challenge. Choose a theme, make it simple, and make yourself take a series of pictures. Themes can be as simple as “The Number 2”, “The Colour Blue” or “Circles”. This keeps it very broad but gives you enough focus (no pun intended) to think about your images. Try and make each image very different, ok some may not be successful, but you learn more from mistakes and you will start to train your eye to be creative in what you are looking at.
Another challenge to set yourself is to take one everyday object and get 10 different images of it. Use different camera settings, different lighting, different angles and different viewpoints but try and make every picture unique.