When I first started, every professional photographer at least did the printed mailers once or twice a year, and a combination of various sourcebook advertising. It was the go to standard, and if you had a photography rep it was mandatory.
The printed mailers could be very simple, for instance a basic post card sent out to 500 hundred potential clients that would cost you in the neighborhood of $2,000. Generally it was recommended to do that 6 times a year. And generally 99.9% of those mailers ended up in the potential client’s trash.
Or they could be extremely ambitions (and expensive)… entire 40 page magazines of a single photographer’s work, or giant gallery quality prints. This was a once a year promo at the most and I saw photographers spend over $30,000 on just one mailing! It’s a huge investment not just in money but also the time to put it together. But I suppose if that photographer got one big advertising job from it, well then it was totally worth it.
But if you didn’t think it through, it could be a disaster. Like the photographer that sent out a stainless steel saw blade with his logo and contact information printed on it, buried underneath sawdust inside a raw wood box… a nice presentation and it fit his construction product advertising niche. Sounded like a great idea…. until art directors all around the country dug their hand into the sawdust only to rip open the tips of their fingers on the extremely sharp saw blade!
Sourcebooks were another expensive but ubiquitous option. Every fashion photographer advertised in LeBook, from the most established and successful to the brand new and ambitious. For a young photographer it felt almost prestigious to be in it…. even though you were paying a hefty fee for the privilege at around $5,000 for a two page spread. And if you weren’t Meisel or ripped by the biggest agencies you could pretty much be guaranteed that they would bury you in the very back of the book.
Later in my career the next big thing was email promos. It’s from around $150 to $450 a month for an email list service like Agency Access depending on which client lists you sign up for and how many emails you send. One of the nice things about the service is that you can see who clicked through your emails… but the numbers were abysmal and have only been getting worse and worse through the years. If you sent 1,000 emails and 10 people clicked through to your website that was considered a success! But we all know how much we love getting spam and I guess art director’s are no different..
I put a profile on Instagram around 2012 and really didn’t do much with it… some behind the scenes photos, lots of vacation pics.. I didn’t really know what it was all about so I didn’t pay too much attention to it. It seemed like it was more a social place to share with your friends and I just didn’t want to put any time into it… I was busy shooting, and retouching and doing all the other things photographers have to devote their limited time to.
But then things changed… it started to become an important outlet for discovery, and the whole influencer thing took off… nothing has been the same since.
I saw that clients more and more were talking about Instagram constantly… how they discovered new models, or photographers, talent of every kind… even locations, and props… everything!
About this time I removed the vacation snapshots, all the superfluous crap that had migrated there over the years, and just concentrated on displaying my latest fashion work.
Quickly my profile went from a couple thousand followers to 10,000. And then I got a booking directly from a client that found me through Instagram… a 3 day catalog on a beach in Mexico!
I wanted more jobs like that so I started to invest more time and effort into Instagram. I tried a couple apps that allowed you to more easily search and follow people that had an interest in photography, and my following grew a bit more. I researched other techniques to grow my following, and it grew even more.
But when I signed up for a social media growth service, things really caught on fire. It wasn’t buying fake followers or likes, and it wasn’t magic or some super secret sauce. It was just hiring someone that really knew how Instagram worked, how to research the right audience, and then could make my account active 24 hours a day.
My following went from 15,000 to 80,000 in less than a year! And more importantly, I was getting regular bookings from clients that never heard of me until they saw my work on Instagram. Those jobs took me all around the world… Moscow, London, Armenia. And all from a $100 a month investment..
The service I recommend is called Liked Lab. They have a great promotional and research system, and they are more involved in the process than any other service I have seen… they provide me with analytics so I know the best days and times to post, and what kind of posts work best, what are the strongest hashtags to use. They even give me advice on the look of my profile. It’s been a big help, saved me time, and really helped my career.
We recommend a social media growth service called Liked Lab
So at the beginning of 2017 I wanted to try an experiment… I stopped all other forms of promotion and only used Liked Lab for Instagram. No emails, no sourcebooks or printed promos. What happened? I didn’t see any drop off in activity. In fact, just the opposite. Not only was I getting more work from client’s noticing me on Instagram, now my following and engagement on Instagram was getting so strong that I was getting offers to promote products as an influencer. Ok, that’s not something I am interested in now, I am still busy shooting. But it’s definitely something I can think about for the future or as a side hustle.
So what does it mean? I think the entire photography industry is changing, and the old ways of getting noticed don’t work anymore. You don’t need to spend $5,000 on a sourcebook ad, or $400 a month on emails, or $12,000 on printed promos. I haven’t cracked open a sourcebook in years, all the spam emails I get go automatically to the trash. I think the best thing you can do as a photographer now is just shoot as often as possible, get your work in every magazine or website you can, and then promote promote promote on social media.
What do you think? I’m still experimenting with the best promotion methods so I want to hear what works for you!
The Liked Lab News
NJAL’s Katja Horvat questions whether fashion photography has a future amidst the radical shifts in publishing. How does our current technological milieu fundamentally alter fashion photography as we know it? Is the ubiquity of smartphones, advance in-image editing applications, social media, and the rise of fashion film rendering the canonised medium of fashion photography obsolete?
The evolution of photography over the last two centuries demonstrates the medium’s capacity for vigour and until recently, it’s showed no sign of internal exhaustion. Yet, if we focus on fashion photography today, one could say it’s visibly exhausted in an era of constant technological acceleration. What’s going on right now is the paroxysm of styles, and an array of new publishing formats redefining what was formerly known as photography, to the contemporary realm of “image-making”. Where there is no a priori criterion and where there is no enshrined narrative for fashion imagery, everyone can become a photographer, and with the right resources, a successful one. Yet “success” doesn’t always equate to “skill”.
Now more than ever, our current technological milieu is altering the market, but the majority of buzzy young names in fashion photography will not pass the test of time. Simon Rasmussen, Stylist & Creative Director/Editor in Chief of Office Magazine NYC, says: “Everybody can overnight become a fashion photographer and we see younger and younger photographers shooting editorials and executing look books and such. The successful ones already have a huge following due to their knowledge of how social media works and the power within.” It would seem that though these young photographers might not lack the talent or the creative mindset, it remains increasingly difficult for these photographers to sustain the momentum of their social-media accrued hype for more than a fleeting moment. If these photographers are making work for the immaterial age, and it solely relies on the currency of “likes”, will they have the energy to pursue their practice in the long run?
Hype in the most contemporary sense is a product of social media. Internet based social media has made it possible for one person to communicate with thousands of other people and migrate content to micro-communities aggregated under niche, and organised hashtags. In the context of mass-marketing, social media has reoriented our economy of attention and the entire landscape of traditional advertising and publishing has had to rapidly adapt.
Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough, while speaking to BoF Founder Imran Amed even said, “Blogs posting things about us, going viral, spiraling throughout the internet and it has an extraordinary impact on the business.” So, what we are witnessing can be described as a revolution – one that can be felt all around us, even if we are not actively involved in it. It’s dominating all aspects of our world, even the way we use Internet.
Saša Štucin, Co-Founder of Soft Baroque and Editor at Large at POP Magazine, recounts an opinionated post by Matthews Leifheit on Facebook. Leifheit referenced New York Times photography critic Teju Cole in conversation with Geoff Dyer, Ivan Vladislavic and Laura Weller. The conversation addressed Instagram and the impact of mass imagery on social media will have on photography. Leifheit responded to the photographer’s negative response to their contemporary condition and questioned, “If you’re tired of the billions of photographs that the kids are taking, then maybe you’re tired of photography?”
Though Štucin doesn’t wholly agree, she did say that Leifheit’s statement is the “realest thing I’ve heard in response to that conversation.” Štucin does believe that society has to progress in tandem with technology. “This is 2015, and there’s a very rich, intense and incessant output of photography going on around us, and all the time. Photography is not just, you know, black and white stuff made with plate glass cameras by old white dudes,” she says bluntly. Štucin alludes to a distinction between “high” and “low” photography today that seems somewhat ironic, given the historic struggle photography endured to become a rarefied artistic medium in the first place. At its inception, photography was never considered art and firmly sidelined to the realm of science.
Today, the medium of fashion photography is fractured, given the rise of fashion film as the industry’s new medium of choice for both artistic expression and campaign advertising. Yet, there will always be true grit photographers committed to preserving the art of still photography, even when the very notion becomes archaic. There will be photographers invested in the medium’s rampant technological acceleration, as there are photographers committed to preserving by-gone analogue aesthetics and their outdated apparatuses. Today, the large proportion of photographers working inside in fashion, have to be more flexible with their skills and knowledge, as well as aware of the effects, and the social-media applications which will proliferate attention, and once again adapt to new shifts in the industry’s parameters for fashion photography.
Social media democracy, and its inherent accessibility has made the fashion industry, and the consumer as diverse as ever. The fashion industry, largely because of social media is defined only by front-end, consumer-facing innovation. No longer are the rarefied print pages of a niche fashion bible ripe ground for brands to visually communicate with their customers. Today, 91% of all consumer engagement happens on Instagram, and it’s this very application as well as its limitations that have redefined the parameters of traditional photography and presentation. Tech-enabled methodologies deliver different results as we know it, all visual information is pushed, pulled and shared on every media platform there is, and as a result, quality is no longer heralded over quantity. This era of accelerationism churns out content at an aggressive rate, and discourages smarter, and informed decision-making by its very design.
Simon Rasmussen says, “I truly believe that traditional photography is still alive and it’s a part of my job as an Editor for a print magazine to maintain a high level and demonstrate excellent quality of control in all images we put out there.” While Rasmussen is quick to champion emerging talent across all creative disciplines, he also notes the “huge difference between young, self-taught photographers versus an experienced photographer who went through school and assisted for a decade.” The distinct differences separating these creative generations isn’t just quality, but everything from professionalism, technique, aesthetic affinity, and a more general approach.
Perhaps the most glaring difference for Rasmussen is the younger photographer’s propensity for social media, “I hope that younger photographers aren’t just booked for their Instagram clout anymore,” he says. There’s no doubt a social media “clout-score” will be important to some, but Rasmussen explicitly prefers that his young photographer do not even have an Instagram account. “Luckily taste and aesthetics is still something you have to have and cannot just simply copy and repost,” adds Rasmussen.
Do the fundamental changes in fashion photography as a medium reflect the paradigm shifts unfolding in wider society? The context of creativity has drastically changed; it’s no longer simply about the medium or a single artistic discipline but a cross-pollination. Photography can readily align itself with fine art, architecture, politics, just as fashion photography emerged as a distinct medium amongst photography’s wider interdisciplinary engagement. However, what has changed is that the formula of skill, knowledge and process is no longer a criterion for the medium’s success. Instead, its ruled by an immediate currency of reaction, and its ability to capture and harvest data, which in a fashion context—translates into sales.
It’s this unapologetic commercial alignment that’s also driving a younger generation to preserve the archaic process and practice of traditional photography. Though it’s less about conservation for these younger creatives, the tanglible labour, and mosaic processes of physical photography is a bold, artistic statement in the age of immaterialty. It’s about carving out a niche aesthetic and cultural cachet that sets you apart from the Instagram-ready masses. This cross-pollination of process and practice, and by-gone aesthetics with metaphysical modernism is resulting in a hybrid of new aesthetics and anti-aesthetic styles, where traditional techniques and contemporary technological freedoms intermingle. Saša Štucin adds that these contemporary conditions are symptomatic of, “thinking about what photography could be if we forget what we know about photography entireley.”
The metamorphosis of the photographic medium is forgetting its preconceptions without ignoring them. While we can’t necessarily predict what the fashion industry will look like in the future, one thing remains certain, and that’s documentating fashion will become even more intricate and complex in its design and dissemination.
The Liked Lab News
Diving into my inspiration files today to pick out some of my favorite images from some of my favorite photographers.
“Fashion photographers are the new painters,” Peter Lindbergh said as he prepared the show of his dramatic black-and-white images that opened last week at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris. Who would have guessed in the heady 1980s — when Mr. Lindbergh’s new, natural images of Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and others created the supermodel — that the art world would lose its disdain for fashion photography’s commercialism?
Today, fashion photography is art’s rising star, drawing large crowds to exhibitions (which produce much-needed revenue from sponsorships, rentals and even merchandise) and enticing more collectors. Even the fashion industry itself is showing more respect for the form.
Big names are in museum spotlights, from Horst’s classical elegance since Sept. 6 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to Mario Testino’s “Alta Moda,” Peruvians in local dress, at Dallas Contemporary from Sept. 21.
The Sims Reed Gallery in London, which shows prints, is capitalizing on the trend, too, exhibiting fashion photography for the first time, starting this week with Miles Aldridge’s hyper-real, sensual photos, including the sunbathing woman in “Tan Lines” (12,000 pounds, or about $19,400) alongside his preliminary sketches, lithographs and screen prints. As Lyndsey Ingram, the gallery owner, said, “Showing fashion photographs will set us apart from our competitors.”
Mark McKenna, executive director of the Herb Ritts Foundation, pinpointed the 2008 economic downturn as the catalyst for fashion photography’s emergence.
“People wanted to surround themselves with images of glamour and beauty as things were tough, and fashion photos represented the opposite of what was happening in their day-to-day lives,” he said, noting that there has been a twofold increase in prices for Mr. Ritts’s work since then.
Social media today is giving contemporary fashion photographers a far greater profile than artists, who tend to shy away from public platforms, said Alexander Gilkes, a founder of the online auction house Paddle8. Examples include Steven Klein’s Tumblr account, which displays his archive, most pictures shared and easy contact information, and Nick Knight’s 135,184 Instagram followers.
With the explosion of street-style blogs, Instagram and Pinterest, fashion photography has become the new visual language. “We’re very conscious about what people look like now, so that is how we see photos today,” said Michael Hoppen, whose eponymous gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of London represents fashion favorites such as Ellen von Unwerth and William Klein, whose work was displayed this summer.
“Many photos not shot as fashion images are now seen as fashion, like Klein’s ‘Mamas and Papas,’ which was a street photo when he shot it,” Mr. Hoppen said. “And we’ve recontextualized the picture as we’ve moved away from the time.” (Mr. Hoppen also manages the estate of Guy Bourdin, whose sensuous, provocative fashion images are to be shown in London from Nov. 27 to March 15.)
At the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, Elizabeth Broun, its director, echoed Mr. Hoppen’s comments, saying, “We are much more accepting of fashion photography because we have moved from high art to an all-embracing visual culture.” The museum has scheduled for October 2015 a major Irving Penn retrospective, which is to include unseen personal work alongside his celebrated fashion images.
The Smithsonian is hoping for big attendance numbers, much like the Museum Bellerive in Zurich did when it chose as its first photography exhibition the touring show “Coming Into Fashion: A Century of Photography at Condé Nast,” which opened in July.
“Models and lifestyle have taken over from film and everybody, including myself, relates to it,” said Jacqueline Greenspan, the museum’s administrative director. As of Sept. 14, 10,345 people had seen the show, the gallery confirmed in an email. It closes Oct. 19.
“It’s not just young people who show up for the first time,” Ms. Greenspan said. “There are a lot of men, which we didn’t expect, as well as a boho crowd, which we’ve never had before.”
Several shows have had the crowds to prove the appeal: Consider the 2012 Ritts exhibit at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which drew 364,656 visitors, or Mr. Lindbergh’s “Images of Woman and the Unknown” this spring at Gallery HDLU in Zagreb, Croatia. It attracted 11,200 visitors in three weeks, making it, the gallery said, the most popular contemporary art event of the last 10 years in Croatia and neighboring countries.
From an art venue’s standpoint, fashion exhibits also produce new commercial opportunities. For example, the luxury outlet giant Value Retail opened its deep purses for the Victoria and Albert for the first time when its shopping centers in Bicester Village in England and Kildare Village in Ireland sponsored the museum’s Horst exhibit.
Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery in London, said the gallery’s rental for corporate events increased an average of 20 percent when it shows fashion photography like the elegant flappers of Edward Steichen and the edgy, vibrant looks of the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen, both to debut on Oct. 31.
“Some photography shows are too provocative for corporates,” she said, “but beautiful clothes mean more businesses want to be linked with and entertain in these rooms.”
Fashion photography has also become an increasingly attractive investment.
“I prefer to buy a picture instead of putting my money into the stock exchange because I can see it and there are no taxes if you sell today,” said Guilhem Gravier, a Paris-based collector who paid $5,000 in 2002 for his first photograph — Mr. Ritts’s “El Mirage, Versace Dress, Back View” — which is now valued at $60,000. “I don’t trust the financial market, but I trust the fashion photography market because it’s going upwards steadily.”
Auction prices have soared, with fashion photography regularly topping the tallies thanks to famous names such as Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Mr. Penn and now Mr. Lindbergh. For example, two of the three top lots at Christie’s New York photography sale in April were Penn images: “Woman With Roses on Her Arm (Lisa Fonssagrives),” which sold for $185,000, and a black and white Vogue cover image featuring Jean Patchett, $161,000.
However, such prices are modest in comparison with other art forms. Sotheby’s London, for example, sold three oil studies by Francis Bacon for £26.6 million in late June, while Tracey Emin’s unmade bed went for £2.5 million at Christie’s London in January. So in comparison, Kara Vander Weg of the Gagosian Gallery noted, the more affordable price, even for an Avedon print, is a big entry-level draw for new collectors, who eventually may branch out to more expensive works by contemporary artists.
Scarcity has helped fuel fashion photography’s value. There are no reprints of Mr. Avedon’s work, as stipulated in his will, said Ms. Vander Weg, who represents the photographer’s images on behalf of the Gagosian Gallery. Modern-day photographers are limiting their prints too, with Mr. Aldridge distributing just three per photograph to his New York, London and Amsterdam galleries.
“As the Internet has smashed magazines and the print world into smithereens, we are now seeking other forums,” Mr. Aldridge said. “When I take a picture, I wantto make the print big for my galleries, so I shoot on film; in that way it is to be printed for the gallery rather than a magazine.”
International markets also have been responding to fashion photography’s appeal, which is why Arnaud Adida, founder of the A. Galerie in Paris, said in an email interview that he took only fashion images to display at Photo Shanghai, the city’s first international photography fair, held this month.
Mr. Adida said his stand, which showcased images such as Patrick Demarchelier’s 1994 intimate portrait of Kate Moss and Carla Bruni, proved to be so popular that within a week of the event he had made enough sales to recoup his expenses, and added 25 new and potential clients to his roster.
Fashion photography is also more recognized as a big part of the fashion industry today, said Inez Van Lamsweerde, who, along with Vinoodh Matadin, make up a well-known duo in the field. Their digitally manipulated fashion images are often seen in influential art spaces like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the São Paulo Biennial, in Brazil.
“We translate the designers’ idea into an image that people buy,” Ms. Van Lamsweerde said. “Nowadays this is valued more because of the Internet and the need for attention-grabbing content on the web in our image-saturated culture.”
With fashion institutions financing major cultural events, like Chanel’s sponsorship at the Hyères fashion and photography festival in France, many see photography’s role within art continuing to grow. After all, Mr. Lindbergh said, “art is after fashion’s big bucks.”
Are you struggling for new ideas? Do your creative batteries feel as flat and lifeless as a skunk in the fast lane?
Here are 60 ways to breathe new life into your love of photography and re-energize your inspiration.
[update — we wrote a book “inspired” by this blog post — Inspired Photography: 189 Sources of Inspiration For Better Photos]
1. Play with Photoshop
So much of photography these days happens after the shutter release has been pressed. There’s probably a ton of things that you don’t know how to do in Photoshop. Learn something new and see what that does for your photography potential.
2. Read the Manual
It’s not just Photoshop that can do all sorts of things that you don’t know about. Your camera probably has more settings and functions than you know… or know what to do with. You might find a lot of new ideas in the middle of your camera manual.
3. Watch a Movie
Manuals are all well and good, but movies have cinematographers too. There’s not much you can’t learn about landscape photography by sitting back and watching an old Sergio Leone film.
4. Read a Newspaper
Or you can be a little more intellectual and read a newspaper. The Sunday magazines have the best photos but the work by the staff photographers can be great models for creating striking images for amateurs as well as for photojournalists.
5. Visit a Flea Market
Strange objects mean strange shapes, odd shadows and plenty of potential for unique compositions. And you don’t even have to buy anything.
6. Shop at a Farmer’s Market
You never know what you might find at a flea market. At a farmer’s market, you know you can find colors, spheres, people and displays. And dinner too.
7. Check out Some Wedding Photojournalism
It might not be the sort of thing that your clients expect, but the images on display at the Wedding Photojournalist Association’s website might get you thinking about brides and grooms in a whole new way. Instead of the posing and the tripod, you’ll get to blend into the crowd and document the scene. It’s a whole new skill and it could give your wedding photography a whole new lease of life.
8. Hit the Water
You don’t have to be a scuba diver to shoot underwater images. You just need waterproof housing and access to the sea, a swimming pool or even a pond. And once you’re wet, don’t forget to look up as well as down. Some of the most inspiring images can be taken at the point where the light hits the surface of the water.
9. Hit the Streets
There’s a good reason that street photography is so popular: there are so many good things to shoot there. If you haven’t been photographing roads and crowds, give it a go. And if you have, try a different road.
10. Join a Demonstration
Demonstrations are full of flags, banners, placards and crowds. You can lose people in the mass or pick out expressions in the crowd. The only cause you have to support is photography.
11. Watch a Sports Event
The pros have it easiest at sports events with prime positions and lenses longer than your arm. But you can still try something new at your park on a Saturday afternoon.
12. Visit the Zoo
It might not be as thrilling as a Kenyan safari, but a zoo still has the sort of photographic subjects you can’t find anywhere else. Of course, you don’t have to try to squeeze your lens between the bars. Shooting the kids in awe at the monkeys can create some interesting images too.
13. Shoot Fast at a Race Track
Photography: joel.weismann
Race tracks also give you an opportunity to use a new technique: speed. Fast cars and a faster shutter speed can make for some inspired shooting.
14. Visit an Exhibition
Obvious, really. And yet so often overlooked. Any decent-sized town is likely to have at least one photographic exhibition on at any one time. Take in yours and see what the top photographers did to get on the wall.
15. Browse Google Images
You don’t even have to leave the house to find inspiring images though. Toss keywords into Google Images, admire the good photos that turn up and ask how you would have improved the poor ones.
16. Join Flickr Groups
The pictures in Flickr Groups are great places to see what other people are doing with a theme; the discussions are great places to find out how they did it. And you’ll probably find that the feedback you get on your own photos will give you plenty to think about too.
17. Just Step Back and Watch
For children’s photographers in particular, there can be a temptation to just dive in and get the photos. Sometimes though, lowering the lens, stepping back and watching the subject can reveal whole new sides. That’s true for portrait photographers, wedding photographers, animal photographers… in fact just about any photographer!
18. Roam the World with Flickr Maps
Flickr Maps might be a bit slower than Google Maps, but it comes with Flickr Images built-in. Choose a part of the world with interesting topography and see what photographers have done with it.
19. Change your Angle
Most people shoot an object by placing the lens right in front of it. When David Rubinger lay on the floor to shoot up at paratroopers in front of Jerusalem’s Western Wall during Israel’s Six Day War, he created an iconic image. What would you create?
20. Change your Time
Find yourself shooting at the same time of day each weekend? So break a habit. Discover what the light at dusk, mid-afternoon or early morning can do for your ideas. And it’s not just the light that can make the difference here. Just breaking your routine can often be enough to give you a new perspective and a whole new way photography habit.
21. Browse Stock Sites
You don’t have to be a buyer to check out the images on stock sites. You can be a professional photographer looking for ideas too… especially ideas for commercial images. And the searching is simple. Looking at the top-sellers will give you a good idea of what the market is buying, and browsing by category will show what other photographers are doing with their themes.
22. Write a Blog
Darren Rowse, over at Digital Photography School, mentions how much just writing about photography has helped to improve his picture-taking. It doesn’t matter if no one reads it; just putting your thoughts on the page could give you some new ones.
23. Read a Blog
Of course, reading a photography blog is even more inspiring thing than writing one. Not only can you learn what went into a photo and where the idea came from, you can also discover how to sell it. But then we would say that, wouldn’t we?
24. Buy a Photography Book
You can never own too many photography books, and each one you buy should give you a bunch of new ideas. Although that’s true of both books of photographs and books about taking pictures, you might find that photography guides give you more inspiration than a collection of images. The former will give you techniques to try out, while the latter will show you the techniques the greats have used. Stil, if you’re really stuck, go shopping.
25. Browse a Bookstore
Or save your cash, take a pile of book to the store’s café and sit and enjoy yourself. In fact, you don’t even have to take the photography books with you. Even the dust jackets of the hardbacks can give you ideas for shots, especially commercial images.
26. Step Away from the Magazine Racks
Photography: cathyse97
And if book covers can give you ideas, just think what magazine covers can do. These are designed to be eye-catching and stand out on a shelf. They could make your next photo stand out too.
27. Make Friends in the Photography World
Some photographers find it easiest to shoot alone. Others like to shoot as a group. Everyone can benefit from the feedback, discussions and habits of other photographers.
28. Join Photography Organizations
If you’re a professional and you’re not a member of a professional photography organization, you should be. Not only can organizations help with insurance and legal matters, their news, contests, and profiles of other photographers can inspire to make your own splash among your peers.
29. Shoot Yourself
Photography: hen power
When you’re stuck for a subject, always remember that there’s an interesting one behind the lens too. Be brave. Put yourself in the shot for a change.
30. Revisit Your Past
You probably have a stack of old images that you rarely review, including many that you can’t bring yourself to look at. Give them another chance. A shot that failed a few years ago might well be achievable today — and give you ideas for more.
31. Revisit Places You’ve Been Before
And the same is true of locations. Even if you’ve taken a photograph in one location, it doesn’t follow that you’ll take exactly the same image a few days, months or years later. The light will be different, your skills will be different… and so will you.
32. Ask “What if…?”
Some of the greatest artistic answers have come from asking the right questions. A good one to start with is always “What if…?” What if you focused on the foreground instead of the background? What if you changed the ISO? What if you got a flash of inspiration?
33. Leave Constructive Comments
We’ve mentioned that writing blogs can help to give you new ideas, but so can writing comments on other people’s images. Just make sure the comments are constructive. Praise the photographer’s use of shadow, for example, and you’ll be telling yourself how to get similar praise.
34. Join Photo Contests
Everyone and their uncle these days seems to be running a photography competition. And for good reason. They’re a great way to motivate photographers to shoot outside their boxes.
35. Choose a Theme
Photo contests are helpful because in addition to prizes, they also give subjects to shoot. But you don’t have to actually enter a contest to win one of those. You can pick your own theme. You could even use the categories on stock sites as inspiration for subjects.
36. Check out the Big Winners
And of course, taking a look at images shot by the winners of big photo contests, such as the Pictures of the Year, can show how far your image are from those at the top of the profession… and what you need to do to join them.
37. Go Back to the Rules
You probably know the rules of photography. And you probably know how to bend them and when to break them too. So maybe go back to when you were first learning techniques and try working strictly to rule for a while.
38. Just Shoot Anyway
There are always times when you lift the camera, look at the screen and think, “No.” But what would happen if you did it anyway? At worst, you’d waste a bit of disk space. At best, you might surprise yourself and find a new kind of composition.
39. Get a Cause
Few people are more motivated than those who believe they’re working for the common good. So join them. Pick a cause, offer it your photography skills and the end will help inspire the means. You could find yourself shooting all sorts of things from campaign posters to t-shirt images to angry demonstrations. The variety should be as satisfying as the campaigning.
40. Play with Textures
While photographers often pay attention to light and composition, the texture of the materials in the subject can be left behind. Try focusing on touch rather than vision for a few shots and see what happens…
41. Play with Colors
Or be traditional and paint your pictures with bold colors and sharp contrasts. Or try using different tones of just one or two colors and see what that does for yourt results. It might not be original but if you haven’t done it before, it could be time to give experimenting with colors a try.
42. Drop Color Altogether
Photography: cayusa
Of course, you could also be super-traditional and focus on practicing your skills in black-and-white. Do you know which shots would look best without color?
43. Play with Settings
Chances are, once you’ve found a camera setting that works for you, you don’t stray from it too far. So start straying. Play with the exposure, change the ISO, switch the shutter speed. And build on the results.
44. Play with a Point-and-Shoot
When you shoot with a DSLR, you can get used to all the bells, whistles and options that come with an expensive camera. So lay it aside, pick up an instant and shoot on the cheap. You’ll be amazed at what downgrading can do for your creativity.
45. Just Play
The beauty of digital photography is that there’s no penalty for making mistakes. That gives you a free ticket to stop worrying about whether a picture will turn out well or be an embarrassing flop, and just shoot. So try just enjoy taking photographs without thinking too much about the results.
46. Try a Different Specialty
Whether you specialize in wedding, portraits or anything else, try a niche you’ve never done before. You don’t have to do it professionally but just doing it for a while could give you a whole new bag of techniques and inspire new ways of creating your images.
47. Read Forums
We’ve mentioned that Flickr Groups can be good places to find inspiration but so can photography forums. Often, photographers use them to pose questions, but even those questions can get you thinking. The answers can get you shooting. (That can include your answers too. Tossing in your own two cents’ worth can get you thinking about all things you’re not doing — or haven’t been doing yet.)
48. Start a Project
Inspiration might come in a flash but you want it to hang around. Instead of thinking of an idea for one photograph, try thinking of an idea for a series of photographs. If you’d decided to take pictures of lightning for example, expand the concept to include extreme weather as a whole and add photographs of windswept trees and sun-bleached rooftops. That should keep you busy for a while…
49. Take a Photography Class
Photography classes make thinking up ideas very easy. You’ll even be given assignments so that you don’t have to think up subjects at all, just novel approaches to them.
50. Take any Class
Photography: absolutwade
But you don’t have to limit yourself to a photography class. A cooking class will let you create photography subjects that you can eat. A flower-arranging class could give you new ideas for floral photography. Even an origami class could provide a pile of new ideas for images.
51. Define the Perfect Image
Do you know what the perfect image would look like? Bet you’re thinking about it now, right? Instead of thinking how good the next shoot would be, try thinking about what the best shot would look like… then find it.
52. Create a Shooting Schedule
One way to cut back on the regular head-scratching is to plan ahead. Pull out a calendar and decide in advance what sort of images you’ll be shooting each weekend for the next few months. And leave room for flexibility.
53. Pick a Different Model
If you always use the same models or models with similar looks go for something completely different: the opposite sex, a different height, a new age group. See what a different subject can for your ideas.
54. Ignore the Silly Criticism
This one won’t boost your inspiration but it might stop it being blocked. Ask people to comment on your photos and you’ll always get someone with something dumb to say. The challenge is to pick out the constructive comments and leave out the smartass ones that can make you think twice in the future.
55. Do Something Totally Outrageous
Ever told yourself “That would never work?” Well, here’s a “what if…” What if it did work? Go ahead, surprise yourself. Shoot what’s under the sofa. Snap the top of your head. Do something outrageously silly… and see if it works.
56. Give yourself Limits
Some of the greatest literature has been written under the strictest censorship. So limit yourself. Close the door and shoot only an object that you can find in the room. Or tell yourself that you have to produce a fantastic image within the next half hour. Take up the challenge
57. Tell a Story
Good pictures always tell a story. So try thinking of a story then go out and create the images that illustrate it. That could be the story of your street, a narrative describing a community or even the progression of a cub baseball team. Find where your story begins then use your camera to follow it through to the end.
58. Print your Pictures
It’s one thing to view your photos on a computer screen but printing them out and holding them in your hand can be something else altogether. Try printing a selection of your photos and see whether they still work on paper… and how you can improve them.
59. Take an Object, Any Object…
We started this list by pointing out that flea markets are full of strange objects to photograph. But there’s a limit to how you can photograph an individual object in a flea market. So take one home or pick something off the shelf and give yourself a whole new set of still lifes.
60. Buy New Equipment
And if all else fails, you can always use cash. A burst of new ideas always seems to come free with a new lens.
