Blind to the beautiful
Last Tuesday, I went photographing at a disused switchyard which now serves as a big holding track area for railway wagons that are not in use anymore. They are left there to wait for a rusty future. I had thought this would be an excellent opportunity for some interesting shots. However, when I got there, I didn’t really see anything. I stood there, took my time, didn’t rush things, but there was nothing that really caught my eye. The images I got seems more than just underwhelming to me. I was trapped in some sort of creative block.
Overcoming the creative block
Fortunately, I found a solution. I changed my lens and to a 105mm macro prime. Combined with my APS-C Nikon D7100, this equals a whopping 150mm in 35mm terms. As you can imagine, this limited my options considerably. It also gave me a lot of problems to solve. Finding a suitable angle was more difficult. I had to work more precisely with my tripod. The depth of field had to be taken into account much more than before, etc. And all of a sudden, things things started to work out and I got into the flow of shooting. After a while, I began seeing pictures for wider angles, too, so I switched back to my zoom lens and took some long exposures. And even though I wouldn’t have expected it in the beginning, I am quite happy with them.
Looking back at this day now, I find that creativity is not for creatives only. In fact, everybody is creative every single day because everybody has to find solutions for all those tiny (or more significant) problems we have to solve every day. So, tapping into this source of creativity can help us in our creative endeavors, too, right?
What do you think? Is this something that could work for busting your creative block, too?
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Comment
When out shooting something like this (in my case a cemetery or historical mansions) I always have some type of zoom lens. In the past I used primes, but now I can easily shoot many different angles and perspectives. I have gone full circle. Years ago it was a single zoom, changed to primes as I became more experienced, and now back to zooms. Only took 5 decades.