Hi this is Marcin Lewandowski and you're watching AdoramaTV.
Sometimes we all stumble on periods of time when we don't know what to
photograph next.
Today I'll share some ideas with you on how to flex your imagination a little bit.
By constraining yourself to a strictly limited set of parameters, you
will paradoxically open the mind for new possibilities and foreseeing situations in a new light.
A lot of the times I go into books to search for inspiration and
not just photography books but books in general, but there is one 'The
Photographers Playbook', printed by aperture that have found a set of really
inspiring little games.
There's a lot of games that I use with my students for some of the tuition I
do, but there's lots of little tiny games that I like to play myself as well. In
the year 2011,
there was a date of 11.11.11.
So I went out at 11:11 in the morning and I took a photograph every 11
minutes until 11:11 in the evening.
So you can find little things like that. I know that date might not be coming
back,
but there are different ways to play with numbers, like, you can go out on the
eighth of the eighth and just work through the day photographing only in
aperture f/8. You can come out on any day that you want and only constrain
yourself, for example, to very fast shutter speed.
So even just the technicalities of the camera can give really cool
constraints,
how to see things differently, so starting with constraints in your camera,
you can very easily expand this to, for example,
for yourself and your point of view. Why not, for example, turn 180 degrees and
see what's behind you and photograph that. Every time you take a portrait
turn around 180 degrees and take a photograph of that, but why not go
further?
Every time you take a portrait, turn 180 degrees,
ask the person to stand on the other side and take the portrait again. Why not?
We are so much used to seeing most of the things from our eye level,
that it would be cool to flip it and just change the perspective completely.
Why don't we photograph for a day again,
just from the ground level, from the perspective of a child or a pet and see
how you can make a portrait looking from the ground up,
how we can make an interior shot looking from the ground up.
And while you're on this you can also flip it the other way around and take every
photograph from a chair or a ladder, so keep looking down at people that you
photograph, keep looking down at the environment that you photograph and
maybe do it for a day or two,
even with the most mundane things and see how that pans out.
There is one thing that we probably all did at some stage, but maybe not as a
project or just a topic in itself,
reflections. So why don't you look for some reflections in particular.
I, for example, photograph myself for a number of years in reflections in hand
dryers in public toilets.
You can look for reflections in something. So, for example, reflections
maybe in a car mirror and only taken with the long lens and see how these
look. The thing is to give yourself something very specific and stick to it
and keep trying it and looking for any perspective.
There is one more really
cool idea for an assignment which I picked up from book, as well, so you take
two game dice,
or you can take more if you want to complicate it. You assign different directions to
one of the dices and you assign different distances to the other dice.
You roll the dice and, for example, you get for blocks west. You go to that location and
you treat that location as your assignment.
You can either photograph freely, you can either photograph street assignment
day, you can treat as your portrait location or you can use just one of the
previous ideas that was already mentioned.
Thanks for watching this short video I hope I poked your mind a little bit and
got your creative juices flowing.
Don't forget to subscribe to our channel and also check out Adorama Learning
Center for some really cool tips and tutorials.
This was Marcin Lewandowski for AdoramaTV. Hope to see you soon.