Do You Get Photographer’s Block?

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Are you trying hard to improve your photography by shooting as much as you can? Do you sometimes get stuck in a place where you are unsure which way to go next? When photography found me (yes it found me, I didn’t find it) I was consumed by wanting to shoot until my shutter finger hurt.

I tried to shoot photographs every day but sometimes found myself with no direction if I wasn’t shooting for purpose. Once you’ve shot everything in your house and around your neighbourhood, a new photography habit can leave you wondering where to go to next.

I soon discovered places like Photo Friday and Theme Thursday which I loved participating in each week. Each week a theme is posted and photographers are asked to go out and shoot one photograph on that theme. Tracey runs photography lists and scavenger hunts over at Sh1ft and Shutter Sisters have similar things happening in their flickr pool.

Themes are a really great way to stretch yourself as a photographer and make your eyes notice things they may not have before. If you are feeling a bit of photographer’s block, here is a list of themes to go and just shoot!

  • Doors and windows in your neighbourhood
  • Signs- street signs, storefront signs, church signs, road signs, neon signs!
  • Anything that is pink.
  • A word theme e.g. “soft” or “memoir”
  • Sidewalks/Footpaths- Eons ago I ran The Sidewalk Project where I asked people to send in photographs of things they found on the sidewalk. I got hundreds of entries from sidewalks all over the world.
  • Self portraits- yes, shoot your own face for 365 days, 52 weeks or every day for a week. Chantelle is doing her 52 weeks and sharing them at Fat Mum Slim.
  • Books- on book shelves, in book stores, left at bus stops.
  • Coffee designs – a favourite of mine.
  • Things found at the beach.
  • Bathroom Mirror Reflections- Damn Hell Bathrooms on flickr.
  • Different body parts- just hands, just eyes, just feet.
  • Strangers- get up the courage to ask a stranger if you can shoot their portrait.

There are thousands of different themes you can choose to inspire your photography and get yourself out of a camera funk. If you do decide to take on a theme based project, get yourself a flickr account and share it in a set.

Have you got any other nifty ways of coping with photographer’s block?

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Related posts:

  1. Ten Of The Most Inspirational Flickr Photographers
  2. Words To Shoot By
  3. Go Shoot A Photograph

16 thoughts on “Do You Get Photographer’s Block?”

  1. Pingback: Tweets that mention Mocking Bird – Australian & Canadian photography blog » Do You Get Photographer’s Block? -- Topsy.com

  3. i do.. but then again i do take photographs everyday.. its more of at whim.. then spend days editing and uploading and when everything photography gets to me i switch gears and do a bit graphic work.. like creating a few art prints.. and so the cycle continues.

  5. Thanks for the comments.

    Nicole, I admire you for taking it on. I couldn’t do it. When I did my 52 weeks I always thought about trying to recreate scenes from some of my favourite films. I never did but it was something I wanted to play with.

  6. Miss B’s Souvenir Foto School on Flickr is great fun, and inspirational! We just finished shooting the same plant or tree each week over a 6 week period – the different ideas from members of the pool were great to see.

  8. I definitely get in a photo-funk once in a while. Especially when I’ve just finished a roll of film that I was very satisfied with. That self-satisfaction is a curse however because then the inspiration doesn’t come through. I’ve always loved Tracey’s lists and at the moment I have a weekly photo site with a good friend who is halfway around the world and so far we haven’t dried up our reserve of themes/subjects to photograph yet. Fingers crossed that we don’t any time soon because we’re having so much fun. :)

  12. Theme’s are a great way to notice new things and get new inspiration. I always find that going somewhere new helps too. Walking down a street I haven’t been down seems to open all kinds of creative avenue’s in my brain.

    I haven’t gotten around to trying this, but I have some old black and white photos I found from the ’20′s, and I think sometime I would like to try to recreate them. It’s a photo idea I’ve been saving in my head for a “rainy day” so to speak.

  15. Such a wonderful list! I’ll have to try some of these… when in doubt, I always shoot my feet. Thanks for finding me, Amanda! I’m looking forward to reading your posts.

    Hannah