How to be more creative

[Holly26]

I would consider myself a very artistic person, but not at all creative. That fact is now proving to seriously affect the quality of my pictures and my potential to grow as a photographer. I have done some second shooting at weddings, and my style is extremely photojournalistic. I pretty much shoot whatever I observe...that's what I feel comfortable doing, and those are the pictures I am drawn to and enjoy the most. But that is not what's best for me or my work, I realize that now.
If you put two people in front of my camera, or a piece of food (as I'm trying to expand into food photography), no creative ideas will come to mind. Sure I can tell the people to hug or kiss or hold hands... but that's about all I can picture. And with food, I admire these great food photographers putting together the most creative and pretty scenes with this plain old piece of food! And yet me... I'll have the idea to maybe stack a few cookies into a pile together lol, and that's it. No other idea or creative thought/image comes to mind.

I don't know, I just don't feel like I have a very creative mind What can I do about this?

 

[Designer]

I think you should look at more examples of good photography. Go ahead and copy them. Repeat.

 

[The_Traveler]

There are a lot of facile answers - and you'll probably get any number.

What I think is that not much of anything is brand new.
Start looking at lots of shots in the genre you like, try reproducing them and then let go a bit, try small changes.
Try things, learn what kinds of changes to old things are good and work out.

The reality is that art is hard and creating something good is harder.
If it was easy, then everyone would do it.

 

[runnah]

Photography and all art is essentially the act of conveying emotion via a chosen medium.

People are easy and extremely hard at the same time. Take weddings for example. In this case you want to capture two peoples joyful emotion, the parents joy and sadness. You may snap a hundred shots of the bride and only get one where you can really see her emotions at the time. The hard part is getting the true emotion and not some "smile for the camera" moment.

Food, well make it look good enough to eat.

 

[hirejn]

Even the best photographers sometimes struggle. The part of successful photography that's talked about least is hard work. It starts with learning the principles. The more principles you know, the more tools you have to use and the more ways you can use them. If you have just one brush and one color, you're limited in the type of painting you can make, but if you have a set of brushes and 12 colors, you can tell many different types of stories. Then you have to keep practicing until it becomes second nature. Just don't experiment with clients' time and money unless they agree to it. If you look at photography, the rules haven't changed for centuries. You're still recording with light, and you're still using the same principles of art that painters used centuries ago. There's not much truly new about the craft. Creativity is finding new things to do with the same tools and principles, and only you can figure that out. The more you learn, the better.

 

[ABJayce]

Leave the camera at home, walk around your city/town and just observe life unfolding. I do this when I need a little break or some inspiration. As I walk through out my regular day I see everything in frames almost like my brain is programmed to snap that moment. You just need to stop focusing on taking pictures and focus on capturing moments. At a wedding be a part of the wedding. When I shoot weddings I find myself emotionally with it and happy, smiling behind my lens, you can anticipate the moments that are coming and be ready for them. Lastly, shoot what you WANT to shoot, not what you think you should shoot.

 

[Soocom1]

In one of my least dramatic photos taken in the past 10 years was of a tree that was dead, yet the light at that particular moment seemed to give a highly dramatic effect that simply did not convey to print.

Then in one of my more dramatic pictures, a similar tree on a different day came out looking like it was hit with HDR processing, yet was never touched.
Its a hit and miss at times and sometimes it simply depends on certain angles.

As suggested, take a break and LOOK at what is around you. Then shoot up a storm of pictures at diff. angles, elevations, lighting etc of the same subject and then do the same with diff. subjects. something will eventually hit repeatedly and will work for you.
Its all practice.