photography tip friday.....

okay

to be honest with you, i'm not really sure if this is a photography tip or merely a suggestion, 

but i feel it's worth talking about.

i think sometimes it's too easy to get into a rut with photography. the kind of rut where we end up shooting only the things right around us. the things we are most comfortable with. the things we find in the perfect late afternoon light, right in our own backyard or the things we see when the morning light whispers it's way onto our kitchen tables.

now i'm not saying that is bad or wrong. but what i'm asking is 

"where's the challenge" "where's the fun" 

"where are the mistakes you learn from" "where are the photos that turn out perfectly, that you thought you'd never be able to take"

i think sometimes we all have the ability to become stagnant. in anything. 

how we dress. what we eat. how we decorate our homes. even how we live.

but most importantly 

{since this is photography tip friday} 

what we see and what we shoot

so really all i'm talking about today, is livening things up. 

seeing new things. going new places. 

finding new faces.

challenging yourself. 

taking your camera off auto.

wait. 

did i just scare some of you with that auto comment. sorry if i did. but i know you can do it. i know you can put your camera on aperture mode and play around with your depth of field. but you have to want to do it. you have to want to shoot crappy photos and screw up and start over again. 

and 

if you want to screw up even more, put your camera on manual mode. i guarantee you'll take photos you hate, but you just might take some photos that you fall in love with.

i was bored the other day, so i grabbed my camera and went to one of our {many fantastic} lakes. 

it was three in the afternoon and the sun on the water was still blinding. 

i used my 70-300 lens for all of the photos i took, as it tends to be my most versatile lens and 

since it was 85 degrees, i only stayed about 30 minutes.

and

in that half hour, i talked to a few hispanic strangers with beautiful daughters and an older gentleman who asked if i was with the newspaper {which i wish i could have answered yes to} 

but most of all, i shot. i shot a ton of photos, while constantly changing the settings on my camera, 

since i was feeling that i wasn't getting the color of the water exactly as i saw it.

but

i wasn't discouraged. i was excited to be challenging myself. 

i was excited to be PLAYING. i was excited to see who or what i might see next. 

and 

i was excited to see what i was capturing,

even though i knew that wouldn't happen until i got home, since looking at the screen on my camera in the bright sun proves to be a waste of time.

so this weekend. go out and play. in a new place. with new "everything" around you. go to a park you've never been to. or an event that you don't want to do {like log rolling} but where you'll have lots of things to photograph. go to your favorite little bistro, but order something you've never had and take photos of it. ask your hubby to go outside and jump for you, if you want to practice the jumping photos i so dearly love. sure, maybe we've already seen your hubby, so you're asking "what's new with that" but i'm guessing we've probably never seen him in midair.

my guess is that once you venture out of your comfort zone, you'll do it more and more often. you'll realize how exciting people and areas right around you can be. now if i was telling you that what you really need, is to go to another country and spend thousands of dollars on a vacation, just for something new to shoot, you'd all be throwing bricks at me and i would totally understand. 

but i'm not. i'm just suggesting you go somewhere new and see things you haven't shot before.

and

the best part. after all your "new shooting" you will feel exhilarated, like you just exercised. 

and

since i don't exercise regularly enough, but will climb up a tree or a hill to frame what i want to shoot, or squat for thirty minutes in order to get a 2 year old on his level. 

well i consider that a win win.

happy weekend everyone

and

happy shooting

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