Always have your camera... random photo walk.

Often photographers can tend to develop a negative mindset toward their photography, and this can emerge for many reasons.

It could be that the photographic locations chosen are somewhat similar to those that have been frequented before, it could be that photography is your profession and you’re becoming a little stale because you’re always shooting, or it could also be personal reasons beyond photography that are affecting your ability to focus and seek out new ways to create pictures.

Whatever the reason/s, I find that whenever I begin to feel this way I try to find ways to have fun and enjoy creating something different, even if that means simply taking your smallest and most practical camera to a seemingly uninteresting location and seeing what you can make of the environment.

Recently my wife’s car needed a mechanical inspection in anticipation of a sale and due to my wife being unavailable to drop the car off, it was me who needed to take the car along to the chosen mechanic’s factory.

Now, this factory is only approximately ten minutes from our house and is in a fairly standard industrial precinct, certainly not what you would consider to be a photographic zone.

I knew that the inspection would take approximately one hour and given that the location was very close to a major road and intersection I decided to take along my Fujifilm X100F to see if I could capture anything vaguely interesting, particularly at the intersection set of traffic lights.

As I was approaching the intersection I saw that an old boat was parked on a trailer beside the road, and it had obviously been there for some time because there was quite clearly leaves which had fallen and gathered inside the boat. This is a perfect example of not knowing what you can find if you just grab your camera and take a walk.

I glanced back to my left before deciding to move toward the intersection and immediately noticed a beautiful old Dodge truck heading my way, time to move onto the median strip in time to grab a picture.

A short distance from here was the large intersection. The traffic at this time was not particularly busy, and this is an example of a situation where you could become uninterested and lazy and simply give up, however if you remain positive and focused you can challenge yourself to find pictures in scenes such as these.

For example, at traffic lights there are always vehicles coming and going, lights changing and a mixture of contrast and colours.

The Fujifilm X100F has a built in neutral density (ND) filter. For those who are unfamiliar with ND filters they are basically a pair of sunglasses for your camera’s lens.

On brighter days an ND filter can dramatically reduce the amount of light entering a camera which in turn allows for longer shutter speeds to be used without blowing out a scene, because when the shutter is left open for extended periods a picture can often be rendered completely white, even on cloudy days.

Now, if you are taking pictures of moving vehicles then typically you would use fast shutter speeds to help freeze the motion and provide a clean image, however if you wanted to be a little more creative and artistic you could incorporate motion in the image, and one way of doing so is to reduce the shutter speed to create a blur effect.

At intersections you will often see some vehicles which are stationery, whilst others are moving quickly at the same time. This is a perfect scenario to become even more creative with your long exposure pictures.

In situations such as these don’t just focus on the vehicles, always remember to look around and also toward the sky because you never know where the inspiration for your next image is going to come from.

Another quick tip for a fun adventure; Don’t be afraid to get funky with some edits here and there.

Well, it was time to head back to collect the car, although my camera remained ready to shoot, and I was able to grab these images on the way back.

No award winning images here, however they help to tell a story and keep my eyes trained.

If you’re a photographer and you’re in a rut, and you’d like to escape that rut, then try to find relatively simple ways of producing pictures.

I guarantee you that the overall process beginning with a simple concept, then taking the pictures and editing them will make it worthwhile.

Good luck, and stay positive.

Thank you for reading the blog, and I hope that you find some inspiration from it.

Roger Brooks.