help with 2 things please

[iPhoto17]

number 1. im completely out of inspiration, ive been going out the past week shooting and shooting and shooting and i realised something

aside from the random abandoned houses ive shot at theres absolutely nothing around me but trees and water. what do you do when you get to the point that i dont even have the urge to go out and shoot anymore?

number 2. im looking for a good photo printer, i went to walmart and best buy and it seems they only had normal printers not specifically made for printing photos, can someone please sned me a link to a good photo printer please?



thanks

 

[bratkinson]

#1: go somewhere else to shoot. Small town USA can be endlessly fascinating. There's much to see and shoot. And you're not likely to be hassled or panhandled, either!

#2: For my strictly amateur use, I've had good luck with the better home-user Epson printers. I currently have a pair of RX-580 printers (discontinued) that produce surprisingly good photos, as well as have the ability to print directly on white inkjet-printable CDs, which I also do. My only complaint with Epson printers is they tend to reject anything but genuine Epson cartridges.

 

[WesternGuy]

#1. Try something different in your photography - maybe macro/closeup and let this divert your attention from walking around photographing everything in site. Try some abstract imagery - lots of things work for this - patterns in nature or in man-made structures. Try some action photography - shoot birds in flight, cars on the street. Try some HDR. There are literally thousands of things to try. Go to your local grocery store or florist and buy a bouquet of assorted flowers and then go to a place like Michaels or Walmart and buy some colour "paper board" (not sure what it is actually called). Try shooting the flowers against various backgrounds and try shooting them closeup or macro. Try some dawn/dusk/nightime imagery.

#2. I have a Canon i9900 which I use for printing coloured pages and the odd photo. It didn't print black and white very well, so I boughy a Canon Pixma Pro 9500 Mark II and use it for larger colour images and black and white. Here is a link to a review of a number of different Photo printers - Photo Only Printer 2012 | Best Photo Printers | Photo Printer Reviews - TopTenREVIEWS and one that reviews more of the higher end printers - High-Quality Photo Printers | Roundup | PCMag.com. HTH.

______________
WesternGuy

 

[stepollard1]

I can only give you advice on number 1.
I went through a stage like that. I shot a 10 in 10. This is a little exercise where you take 1 wide picture then find a point in that, then take a picture of that. Then pick a point in that picture and so on, hope that has explained it well enough.. You will be surprised how many photograph opportunities you overlook until you really start looking.

 

[Jaemie]

Perhaps try composing your photos in such a way that the results look nothing like the ordinary and are practically unrecognizable as local scenery. This might be more difficult than it seems. Can you make that abandoned house look like a busy office tower? Or turn a patch of weeds into a dark, mysterious forest? An alien landscape? Post-apocalyptic nightmare? Hint: get a piece of cardboard for those shots lying on the ground. Have fun.

 

[KmH]

number 1. im completely out of inspiration, ive been going out the past week shooting and shooting and shooting and i realised something

aside from the random abandoned houses ive shot at theres absolutely nothing around me but trees and water. what do you do when you get to the point that i dont even have the urge to go out and shoot anymore?

number 2. im looking for a good photo printer, i went to walmart and best buy and it seems they only had normal printers not specifically made for printing photos, can someone please sned me a link to a good photo printer please?

thanks

You need to look at other peoples photos to see what is possible. You have to become a student of composition: light, form, texture, line, perspective, shadow, proportion, value, space.
You need to know that vertical lines in a photo convey a sense of strength and power, while horizontal lines convey tranquility and peacefullness, and diagonal and curved lines convey a sense of movement and dynamism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_(visual_arts)
10 Top Photography Composition Rules | Photography Mad
Advanced Composition -- Part I

 

[DigitalDave]

There's always something to shoot... it's only your eyes are perhaps not accustomed to seeing it yet.

Even within a small area there are literally thousands of things/textures you could shoot if you go 'macro'.

Assuming you have a kit zoom lens, pull it to 28mm and go searching. If 28mm doesn't do it for you, then do a bit of 'pseudo macro' and put it on 80mm.. it's not really macro, but can still get some nice shots of objects/textures up-close and so on.

Think of the lovely texture brick work has, the bark on trees, leafs and on and on. Try changing up focal ranges and angles. There's always something.

 

[iPhoto17]

thanks for the help guys, ill definitely try out some new perspectives than just walking around, my phone has a really good macro zooms on it so i can probably use that as well, my pentax k1000 has a 70-200mm macro but film is way expensive right now

and ill check out epson printers

 

[GnipGnop]

Read this book : Seeing Fresh: The Practice of Contemplative Photography

 

[TCampbell]

Hmm... you may, or may not, have heard of the saying in photography "f/8 and be there". If not, it's time you learned about it.

See this article: f/8 And Be There from Adorama Learning Center

But you can do web searches for a lot more about Arthur Fellig (WeeGee) and the meaning behind the expression.

In particular, you probably need to contemplate the meaning of "be there". This is sort of "Peaceful Warrior" (there's a book and a movie ... I'm sure the movie is on Netflix) zen like stuff, but it does relate to photojournalistic photography. One of the themes in the book is "there's ALWAYS something happening" -- the mentor tries to imbed this lesson into the learner until he opens his eyes and learns to see the world around him. For a photojournalistic photographer, it's probably a lesson well worth learning. It's basically the meaning of "be there".

Fellig (who usually took photos of crime or tragedy) was able to capture the essence of the scene... the mood, drama, tension, emotions, whatever it was.

If you're in a neighborhood with abandoned buildings, then you might be thinking the place looks like blight, despair, abandonment, etc. So you've got to think to yourself... WHY do you think it looks that way. What is it that you see around you that would drive that point home in a photograph. Also consider that lighting and shadows will also suggest a mood or emotion. Brilliant sunshine doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with a feeling of despair... but long shadows do. You're bringing together the elements of an emotion into a photograph in order to grab the viewers attention and get them to connect with what they see.

 

[iPhoto17]

im getting a 50-200mm lens tomorrow, ive had my d3000 for 3 years now and i think its finally time to upgrade and put something new with it, next i want is a wide angle or a real macro lens

 

[Dominantly]

A new lens generally sparks an immediate creativity boost.

I say this because I have gone through quite a few lens rentals myself (I am fortunate enough to live very close to a Calumet store). I started off with the 50mm f/1.4 and got my narrow dof phase started, then I rented the 10.5mm fisheye an boy did that allow me to explore composition in a whole new way. Then I ran down the holy trinity (12-24/ 24-70/ 70-200), and added a 300mm lens for a shot at wildlife captures.

 

[iPhoto17]

A new lens generally sparks an immediate creativity boost.

I say this because I have gone through quite a few lens rentals myself (I am fortunate enough to live very close to a Calumet store). I started off with the 50mm f/1.4 and got my narrow dof phase started, then I rented the 10.5mm fisheye an boy did that allow me to explore composition in a whole new way. Then I ran down the holy trinity (12-24/ 24-70/ 70-200), and added a 300mm lens for a shot at wildlife captures.

sounds like you had a blast with all those different lenses, id love to get my hands on a fisheye too

 

[Forkie]

number 1. im completely out of inspiration, ive been going out the past week shooting and shooting and shooting and i realised something

aside from the random abandoned houses ive shot at theres absolutely nothing around me but trees and water. what do you do when you get to the point that i dont even have the urge to go out and shoot anymore?...

Trees + water = wildlife

Also, I just checked "Cornelius, NC" on Google Earth. You have a whopping great lake called Norman on your doorstep, how can that be boring?! Get out there at sunset or even better, sunrise! The mist over the lake and reflections must be great! It has craggy shores and a few marinas that I can see. There's also a small aerodrome near the frankly, amazing sounding "Gold Mine Island" where there should be a few light aircraft to shoot (some made of gold, presumably) and a proper airport further down in Charlotte. There's a quarry in Lowesville.

Is there anyone around the lake you can borrow/hire a small rowing/motor boat from and get out to any of those myriad islands in the lake?

Excuses man, excuses!


I don't know about the printer.

 

[pgriz]

We discount the familiar. The trick to "seeing" is to push aside our normal mental processing, and to observe without judgement, without categorizing, without trying to fit things "into their place" whatever that is in your world-view. Put yourself in the mind of a person who is completely unfamiliar with your time and place. What would you observe? If you were a visitor from Centauri Prime, what would you notice? If you were a new-born able to see through YOUR eyes, what would you see?

Another way of boosting creativity, is to reconstruct a history of an object, a person, or a place - What happened that this object/person/place appears to us now as it does? Can you construct a visual chronology?