How to get out of a photography rut

What do you do when you are bored with your camera, creatively in a dead-end or stuck on a disappointing photography plateau? You may feel powerless to change or afraid to try something new. It’s easy to wallow or procrastinate but if you want to get out of your photography rut you might need to take positive action which almost certainly involves doing something radically different.

The problem is that the neurons in your brain are on autopilot. You pick up your camera and your brain responds with a “same-old, same-old” idea. You take the same photos with the same lens and the same settings. They might be beautiful but you are not challenging yourself. Recreating things that have worked in the past won’t lead to new ideas.

I asked current A Year With My Camera students what they do and here are their suggestions.

Fun ideas

Make it fun, not a chore. Stop telling yourself you “should” do something. Take photos that make you smile.

1. Collect a rainbow: for the next seven days collect a different colour of the rainbow each day. This will help you start looking for photos in unlikely places.

2. Go back to the Make 30 Photos prompts and have another go. Compare the ones you do now to the ones you did before you started A Year With My Camera.

3. Get a bird feeder and learn to photograph your new visitors.

4. Put a time in your diary to take photos so that you don’t feel guilty. Get out, go for a walk if you can, and just make a start.

5. Pretend you’re someone else for a day and shoot what you think they’d shoot. It can be someone you know or a famous photographer.

6. Find some other photographers and go on a meetup. Each person has to bring one prompt to the meetup which everyone else has to photograph.

Novelty

To short-circuit your brain’s tendency to default to autopilot you need to jolt it out of its habits. Do something completely different.

1. Try another creative pursuit instead for a week or so – drawing, sculpture, embroidery.

2. Go somewhere you’ve never been before and take photos as if you are a travel journalist. Even if it’s just a nearby field or new part of town – try and make it interesting for someone who lives a long way away. Try sticking a pin in a map and just going there to take photos.

3. Commit publicly to a photography project. Tell your friends and family, or announce it on Instagram: you could try 50 with 50 (50 days taking photos only with a 50mm lens). Or look into the 100 Day Project (it officially runs in April each year but you can start it any time).

Permission to fail

If you have reached a level of competence with your camera you might not want to try something different in case it doesn’t work. Give yourself permission to be a learner again. Recognise your first shots will be “failures” but that this is part of the creative process. Read this post: Change to a learner’s mindset.

1. Teach yourself something new and promise yourself you won’t be critical. Give yourself permission to be a beginner. Pick one:

back-button focus (look it up)
intentional camera movement
off-camera flash
portrait photography
macro
still life photography

2. Pick an artist and create an image inspired by their work, again with no expectation of producing a masterpiece. Do it for the experience not the outcome:

Do some admin

Sometimes you just need a break from image-making.

1. Sort your archive:

make sure everything is backed up
do your keywording
if you don’t use a digital asset manager research something like Lightroom
reflect on how far you have come on your photography journey
note down any ideas that are prompted as you review your old images

2. Edit old photos that you never got round to processing at the time

3. Clean your gear including your sensor (or if you are nervous about doing it yourself, take it to be cleaned).

4. Print some photos. Give them to friends or get them on the wall.

Over to you

Begin today.

And if there’s something that works for you that isn’t included here, click here to add it to our community Facebook post.

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