What Photography Challenges Can Do To You

Recently, I got inspired by a post on DPS about photography projects to spark ones creativity, and I committed myself to do one self portrait every day for 30 days in a row. Now, only 6 days into my challenge, I can speak for some of the great things following such a challenge do to you and your photography.

Sparks Creativity

Well, that one was kind of obvious, as that was one of the main reasons I started doing it. Nevertheless, it is pretty important.

Okay, I could have gone for a 365 days challenge, but that just seemed too much for me. Anyways, faced with the task of doing 30 self portraits in a row, one has to come up with some ideas. For starters, I have some myself, but what I also did (and do) was to go out there on the net, and see what others have done. Searching flickr for self portraits has proven really helpful, and sparked many ideas to new ways of doing portraits.

Force Learning of Techniques

Even though I have had a DSLR for some years now, it is only within the last copuple of months, that I bought myself a decent tripod. And even then, I haven’t taken that many shots using it yet. Going into self portraits, I am using my tripod for many of the shots. And already now, I feel much more confident using the tripod, setting it up, knowing what it can do and what it cannot, etc.

Another learning experience I am into currently, is setting up flashes. Not long ago, I bough some cheap wireless Cactus triggers and an extra cheap-o Hong-Kong flash. These are really fun to play with. More and more, I am starting to think lighting into my pictures. And that does not only go for the portaits, but for all shots. I acknowledge, that I should have done this long ago, but I haven’t.

Opportunity to Gear Up

We all know it. Photography is a gear sport :-) and I simply had to buy a wireless remote trigger for this project. Still eagerly awaiting it though, … from Hong-Kong again.

So, if you are into photography, I can only recommend taking up a photography challenge of some sort. You can follow the results of my challenge in my flickr set here.

September 6, 2009   Posted in: Photography

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