This week we visit the impossibly blue water of Exuma Bahamas.
Hey, uh, Bobby? Yes. Dan, why are we on this Island? I dunno,
Stan. Is this a dream? If there were a dream, there probably be more snacks.
Maybe that Buddha snacks, guys, guys, they have snacks,
snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks, snacks.
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flying into Exuma, Bahamas, you fly over this ledge.
It's where the ocean goes from incredibly deep to ridiculously shallow and low
tide.
Some of the spots are only a few feet deep and that's how I kind of feel when I
hit a creative block,
but there is a lot going on and then all of a sudden I'm in the shallows.
I have no way to access my internal creativity and with that comes lack of a
desire to create anything at all.
It sneaks up on me like that ledge and it can last days, weeks, or even years.
I'm hoping that by coming here to Exuma and getting out of my usual routine that
I can unlock some of that creativity. Again, worst case,
at least the water's nice here. The wheels on the correct side.
That's good.
Usually you get an North American style car with the wheel on the left,
but you drive on the opposite side of the street here.
It's a little bit challenging to get over,
but when the wheels on the other side at least makes a little more sense.
It gets you a little bit out of your comfort zone of driving as you normally do.
The hardest part about driving on the opposite side of the road.
As soon as you get out of the airport,
then it just puts you into this roundabout
and you have to do everything opposite of what you would usually do.
It's really beautiful here.
I sure wish I had someone to share this with, so
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when we get together
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super per grade, so great. So great.
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forever.
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the sun staring the star scene,
whoever you
so do you ever get creative block? How do you overcome it?
I think it's mostly just made up in your head.
We're going through all these scenarios. We're asking all these questions,
talking about all these things. When you're constantly asking yourself,
why am I doing this? What am I gonna do? How am I going to do it? You know it,
it blocks you from just going out and actually doing the thing you're intending
on doing and I, in my opinion,
I found that when I get like that,
if I just force myself to go out and start shooting and making photos,
usually I ended up with something that I'm happy with and I'm like,
why was I overthinking that in the first place?
Could just be in your head.
You're worried you're not going to come up with something good and it's almost
like a defense mechanism to just say, Oh, I don't have any ideas.
I'm not going to go create something.
When usually just starting is what leads you to the idea.
I don't think I've ever done anything great where my intention is going,
you know, Hey, I'm going to do this great thing right away.
I'm going to go there,
executed perfectly and leave those never work out.
It's usually me trying something completely different, you know,
on a whim that leads me down this road where I end up making something
unexpected that I didn't even plan on in the first place.
And that's kind of the fun of this whole thing. You know, discovery
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it was a sunny day.
I got a different kind of fill in the Canda and never
see the dolphins. Don't see dolphins too often over here.
What a perfect, what a perfect.
Yeah, they come. That's piggy, her name is Panda.
You're going to do it so we could get a good picture. Come on, dare you. Oh,
that's a nice side
of this little girl coming down with her name's Trixie
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Usually golden hour is when you're gonna get your best photos.
The one major exception to this rule is if you're out here and you want to get
that nice blue water, you really need the sun nice and high.
So it penetrates nice and deep.
So you're able to get kind of that crystal clear blue water,
a Koolaid Windex that you see behind me.
And now we're going over here to Evan to tell you how to get blue to the next
level.
This is how you're going to get next level blues.
This is a circular polarizer and I'm going to give you just a quick one minute
breakdown of how exactly these work. Screw it on your lens, like sewed.
There we go. So how a circular polarizer works is essentially,
you know when you put on polarized sunglasses and you remove the cold layer from
your car window, whatever it is you're looking at.
Same concept just on a camera lens.
Now what makes it a circular polarizer is you need to adjust the polarizer
accordingly to get the best effect. Now here's the thing.
This is a 20 millimeter lens.
When you have a circular polarizer on a wider lens,
it becomes more difficult to control the effect because you're covering more
distance.
So I would recommend if you're out shooting on a day like this and you want to
get a nice even blue sky gradient and a nice blue reflection look in the ocean,
probably want to use more of a mid range lens,
like a 35 to a 50 but we're going to make it work today on the 20 so all you're
going to do,
you move the polarizer until you see the sky evenly change to this deep blue
color and then you're also going to see the reflection on the water go away.
So it's on you to see when the effect is taking place and when it's not.
Big difference right there. So circular polarizer made easy
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one of the quotes that sticks with me a little bit is that amateurs wait for
inspiration and professionals just get to work.
And I feel like whenever I'm just feeling like I'm uninspired,
that if I get out there and just start doing something or I need to get out
there and start doing something different from what I usually do,
that eventually it all starts to link back together.
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hitting the first domino. You just, if you can just knock that first one over,
which is, you know, going somewhere, you know, going on,
if you want to do landscape photos, just starting a hike, start the hike.
You don't even have to think about doing any photography. Just start.
And then the whole process will build upon itself.
Same thing with street photos. If I'm so worried about what I'm gonna do,
it's way harder than just getting out of my car,
starting to walk and just look. And then the photos kind of come to you.
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if you ever suffer from creative block, just know that you are not alone.
And the best way to get past it is to just get back to work.
Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercise in order to do its best work.
So get out there, create, iterate, and make something for yourself.
Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next week on another episode.