Photographers Block?

[JDP]

Apologies for the delay, I have been drafted onto ISO accreditation team at work.... It's vile....

I’ve seen a bit of this attitude lately and it’s bonkers.

Photography is a skill, it requires knowledge and practice. That can be obtained in a very short amount of time with sufficient drive, or never without the necessary application.

My uncle was the only ‘keen’ photographer I knew growing up, and to be brutally honest, by the time of his death in his 80’s he’d never taken a photo with any attraction beyond that for family history.

But I’ve also worked with photographers who have become successful pros within a couple of years of starting.

The difference is largely down to attitude, btw I have owned a guitar for 15 years, and it gives me no pleasure at all, I still can’t play and I’m certain it’s not because I’m incapable, more that I can’t be arsed.

Yeah, I think it comes to the whole spending too much time on social media, for me it is anyways. I have stopped following other content creators and started to concentrate on my own stuff and/when I get a creative idea I actively search for it.

I think I am lucky in the sense I have the knowledge, it's just applying it never appears to work, for me anyways. I am thinking about diversfying my photography too.. I am going to invest in a macro lens, second hand sigma and see what I can do this winter..... I usually focus on bird photography but recently my fieldcraft has lapsed so I am off to Scotland for a week in June to nail some landscapes. I guess it's just knuckling down and actually doing the damn hobby!

It's crazy how much attitude effects everything! I really think photography or being creative, in music or photography it's a midset.

I have been playing chess all my life, on and off, but my rating is under 1000ELO (which is pretty grim unless you are a beginner with an excuse) but I love playing the game but nothing comes easy. As with chess, so it is with taking the definitive photograph, I like the trying, if I won every time it wouldn't be any fun.

That's true, part of the fun of photography, for me, anyways is failing a shot - studying and working out how I can not screw it up next time.... But then I don't pick up the camera for months on end! ha.

as Ansel Adams 'apparently' once said... landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer and often the supreme dissapointment.

 

[stevewestern]

For years I've been in and out of photography, loosing my mojo at times and really enjoying it at others.
Also, for years I've put off the idea of joining a camera club. Well, I've just started going to my local one, and while I've not been out much with my camera in the last 2 weeks I've been looking through my old pictures, re-editing and printing for next week's competition and feel like I may even start making a couple of friends which is so good for my head - the last few years have taken a lot of the fun from my life, but maybe it's about to change.
So, it might be something to think about for you too!

 

[munch]

I have to admit I have certainly lost my photography "bug" I rarely now take my camera with me. Always have my phone so that is the camera of choice. I think in part it has been the frustration that whilst out walking I have come across so many "moments in time" that I just haven't been quick enough to capture. Things like the Kingfisher that was no more than a couple of feet away when we realised our presence. The Heron flying that low over the canal that it's wing tips touched the water. The moles head boking out of the soil I could go on.

 

[Cockney]

Digital is nowhere near as skilful or satisfying as shooting film.
There, I've said it.

 

[Phil V]

Digital is nowhere near as skilful or satisfying as shooting film.
There, I've said it.

From what I recall of shooting print film; it had amazing exposure latitude, which digital cameras only caught up with about 5 years ago. (Still now you have to understand how to process digital to take advantage of the latitude).

And the nice lady in the lab used to fix all my colour balance issues (while she was fixing my exposure).

Slide film is a bit more challenging (very close to early digital in fact).

As for ‘satisfying’ well that is so obviously a personal preference.

For me; the satisfaction of arriving home, downloading my images, pouring a glass of wine and ensuring my output is the best it can be beats sending off my film and waiting a week to see the results, or alternatively messing about with noxious chemicals to keep control.

But as I said other people’s boats might float in different bodies of water.

 

[Musicman]

Slide film is a bit more challenging (very close to early digital in fact).

I used to shoot a lot of slide film back in the day (Kodachrome when I could afford it and Boots' 200 when I could not) and that resonates well. Certainly you are right that the challenge of using early digital, especially when limited to saving only JPEG files, was very close in terms of limited exposure latitude and having to get each shot right at the point of capture.

Technical limitations aside, even the means of viewing your pictures as transmitted light (phosphors a screen or light passing through the film itself) meant/means that the experience of looking at digital photos is much more like transparencies than prints.

Fox Talbot invented his calotype process to save him having to learn to draw properly. There was plenty of commentary in the 19th century saying photography was taking all the skill and satisfaction out of illustration and portraiture, so these kinds of questions are as old a photography itself.

 

[Musicman]

Oh, and to the OP: for my money, I think you have to find ways of being interested in something other than photography so that you can apply your photography to that.

Projects and the other suggestions people have made are ways into that. If your other joy in life is golf, try making pictures of your friends playing golf. If it's vintage cars, go find vintage cars to photograph.

A little further down the road, should you want get deeper into it as an expressive art, you need to figure out what it is you want to say about the world with your photography.

 

[droj]

Oh, and to the OP: for my money, I think you have to find ways of being interested in something other than photography so that you can apply your photography to that.

Projects and the other suggestions people have made are ways into that. If your other joy in life is golf, try making pictures of your friends playing golf. If it's vintage cars, go find vintage cars to photograph.

A little further down the road, should you want get deeper into it as an expressive art, you need to figure out what it is you want to say about the world with your photography.

Succinctly put, Rob.

 

[Cockney]

From what I recall of shooting print film; it had amazing exposure latitude, which digital cameras only caught up with about 5 years ago. (Still now you have to understand how to process digital to take advantage of the latitude).

And the nice lady in the lab used to fix all my colour balance issues (while she was fixing my exposure).

Slide film is a bit more challenging (very close to early digital in fact).

As for ‘satisfying’ well that is so obviously a personal preference.

For me; the satisfaction of arriving home, downloading my images, pouring a glass of wine and ensuring my output is the best it can be beats sending off my film and waiting a week to see the results, or alternatively messing about with noxious chemicals to keep control.

But as I said other people’s boats might float in different bodies of water.

To me, shooting film was more about capturing a moment in time, be it portrait, landscape or sport. A lot of the challenge is lost when, at zero cost, you can burst 100 frames and pick out the best expression or key moment later.
I think if you have 36 shots you are more considered in what and how you shoot. With digital people take 500 while walking the dog. With film you saw very few shots of people's dinner.
Sending film off made it more of an event as well.

 

[Phil V]

To me, shooting film was more about capturing a moment in time, be it portrait, landscape or sport. A lot of the challenge is lost when, at zero cost, you can burst 100 frames and pick out the best expression or key moment later.
I think if you have 36 shots you are more considered in what and how you shoot. With digital people take 500 while walking the dog. With film you saw very few shots of people's dinner.
Sending film off made it more of an event as well.

Again, horses for courses.
There’s upsides and downsides.
When I loaded a film to shoot a wedding, every shot had to count. Do you think that led to a drive to be creative? To explore personalities or wait for a decisive moment?
No, it meant setting up and perfectly executing a few dozen stock photos.

Shooting digital with freedom allowed me to flex my creative muscles, it didn’t matter if I binned 60% of what I shot, the 40% I delivered were head and shoulders better images than my film shots.

For fun I shoot rally cars. The trick with my film camera was to prefocus and hope that my pan speed and framing would work. And if I was lucky I’d come home from a 3 day event with half a dozen images I was happy with. My modern cameras give me half a dozen shots of every car.

Do you think it’s more fulfilling to achieve less?

Cos with a background in engineering, and a career in data, the idea of ‘sometimes’ succeeding but enjoying the endeavour is bonkers. My aim is to consistently produce images I’m happy with.

I took my granddaughter to Eureka on Saturday. The 50 pics I sent her mum were all better than she’d have got if I’d been shooting film (not enough light to start with; neither for typical film iso or perfectly focussing on the eyes)

 

[Plain Nev]

Do you think it’s more fulfilling to achieve less?

I think it can be counter productive, to be honest. I do shoot film and it takes forever to finish a 36 exposure roll of film. Simply because I'm being frugal with what I shoot.

 

[Cockney]

Again, horses for courses.
There’s upsides and downsides.
When I loaded a film to shoot a wedding, every shot had to count. Do you think that led to a drive to be creative? To explore personalities or wait for a decisive moment?
No, it meant setting up and perfectly executing a few dozen stock photos.

Shooting digital with freedom allowed me to flex my creative muscles, it didn’t matter if I binned 60% of what I shot, the 40% I delivered were head and shoulders better images than my film shots.

For fun I shoot rally cars. The trick with my film camera was to prefocus and hope that my pan speed and framing would work. And if I was lucky I’d come home from a 3 day event with half a dozen images I was happy with. My modern cameras give me half a dozen shots of every car.

Do you think it’s more fulfilling to achieve less?

Cos with a background in engineering, and a career in data, the idea of ‘sometimes’ succeeding but enjoying the endeavour is bonkers. My aim is to consistently produce images I’m happy with.

I took my granddaughter to Eureka on Saturday. The 50 pics I sent her mum were all better than she’d have got if I’d been shooting film (not enough light to start with; neither for typical film iso or perfectly focussing on the eyes)

I think we're arguing the same point.

 

[memnonagger]

For me, it's a hobby. There are times when I take a bunch of photos and then just delete them because it seems like complete nonsense to me. Although I do recover some of them later.