Being an amateur photographer (with skills somewhere around intermediate, I think) I always want to improve my skills. Four years ago I took the leap to upgrade to a DSLR from a regular old point & shoot, and have not regretted it. Since then I’ve taken a few classes to sharpen my skills and really learn more of the functions of my camera (a Nikon D5000). I’ve upgraded to a longer lens after a great experience renting one from BorrowLenses.com a few years back, and I’ve increased my arsenal of accessories, from tripods to monopods, rubber hoods to rubber skins. It got to a point last year that my dad wanted to buy me something camera related for my birthday and everything I could possibly want was up in the hundreds of dollar range (like different lenses, flash units, etc) since I’d bought all the little stuff (filters, remotes, bargain flashes) myself.
It’s gotten to the point where I don’t take many pictures anymore. A perusal of my Flickr feed (a yearly birthday present to myself to keep the Pro account) shows a set I took about a month ago, before that some I took at the beginning of February, and then before that… Christmas. I need ideas for photographic inspiration!
Where do folks find inspiration for going out and shooting? I like nature shots, flowers, sunsets, but it seems that anywhere I’d like to go, I either can’t get anyone to go with me or there’s a LOT of walking involved. Which, I’m into photography… not hiking. So I know that if I got tired of walking around some place, my pictures would suffer.
I’m still kicking myself in the butt for not capitalizing inspiration I had a couple months ago. There was a carnival in town near the Oakland Coliseum, and I thought that it would be cool night shots to go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline across the estuary from where the carnival was and get the rides all lit up with the reflection of the water. But of course, before I got off my lazy butt to do it, the carnival had moved on to a less picturesque location.
So, photographers out there… where do you go for photographic inspiration? Where do you look?
