I want to tell you all about my creative struggle. Ever since we opened the studio and really started getting busy, I have found it increasingly harder to be creative. It used to be that I would have a shot in my head for weeks, sometimes months before I actually had time to try it, and/or found some poor sucker to stand in and model for me. My children became tired of seeing the camera, and my daughter would run, hide, and cover her face as soon as she saw the flash come out... Now, I am so busy with paying jobs that I don't have time to experiment with different lighting setups, or out of the ordinary shots. I stick with the tried and true posing, lighting, shooting... It's new to the customer, just not to me. So here's what I'm doing about it....
A personal project. I started a personal project last week, and it's going to run for a couple of months. I haven't really decided on a "due date" for myself, but we'll play it by ear. I found a while back that I really enjoy one softbox, high "butterfly" lighting. The shot you see above is just that. One soft box (in this case a 12" by 36" strip light) as high as I can get it above the subject pointing down at about a 75degree angle. It produces razor sharp shadows on the face, and is something different. Here's another example:
Admittedly, this doesn't look so good on women, but I'm going to try anyway. This is my assignment for a while. I'm going to grab anyone I can and take one light butterfly style photographs of them. I may end up putting them all in a coffee table style book, I may not do anything with them at all. I don't know...
All of that to say this.. Get out and shoot. Take some photos. See what peeks your interest. See what makes you happy. Go out and assign yourself some project whether it be photos of buildings, or cars, or different types of birds. Just go do something. Try to be creative though. Don't just do random shots of birds or cars. Really put some thought into it. Think about what works best, what doesn't. Try some things that you may not normally try. If you always take your car shots in nice even daylight, try going back at sunset, or better yet, just after the sun has dropped below the horizon. Try to take photos that you wouldn't normally take. You may surprise yourself in the end.... When I'm done, I'll share my project with you all. I'll show you what I've done. Until then Keep shooting, have fun! Jason
I like both of these shots a lot, Jason.
ReplyDeleteConnie
agreed, very cool. I can see where it might not be to popular with women. It's a little too true and telling. Nice work.
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