Admit that landscape photography sometimes is not really that enjoying and relaxing as what most people might think of. No doubt, those photos that were taken from all the beautiful sceneries are amazing but at the back, the shooting process can be not really that easy-going. It can be tough to deal with extreme weather, to hike up to a mountain’s peak or getting totally worn out due to a few days traveling, taking photos and lack of sleep, furthermore getting irritating bugs’ bite. But one thing that drives us getting over all these challenges is our passion toward the photography, to get the photo that we want.
It is important to keep your passion burning. Here are several ideas that I want to share with you all, you can use them as an advice or a reference for you to set up your target for this year. The accomplishment of something giving you greatest satisfaction and self-affirmation.
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Here I’m referring to learning new techniques or trying a different type of photography. By doing so, it gives you a new milestone to be achieved and also the excitement that comes together from the learning process. For photography technique, you can learn digital blending or even try creating Panorama photo, from a single row panorama to multirow or even a 360-degree photo, depending on the gear that you are using.
Or, doing Timelapse video, which is something totally different from a photo. Not only you able to manipulate the time by taking a sequence of photos that take minutes, hours, days or even months and play it in an only few seconds video. On top of that, since you are taking photos instead of video, which mean that you can make a good use of the superior image quality that provided by your camera, allows you to create a Timelapse video with better dynamic range and more details, or even capturing the Milky Way rising across the night sky, which usually required using a very high ISO and long shutter speed.
Other than that, you can photograph something that previously you never try before or maybe less focus on. If you haven’t into Astro Photography, you should give it a try. Unlike Landscape photography, most of the time you are taking photos using a much higher ISO that normally you would want to avoid. Furthermore, there are more factors that you need to consider when you plan your shooting, such as Milky Way rising time, it’s position at a specific time, the moon phase, and the light pollution condition. However, once you get the hang of it, you will find out it is not really that difficult.
Besides that, you could give a try by doing a selfie photo, of course, with the beautiful sceneries together, we are still the photographers, aren’t we? 🙂
Another thing that you could try is Star Trail photography, it is similar to how you photograph a Milky Way but this required you to take a series of photos continuously for at least half an hour, in order to get perfect star trails (It do sounds like taking Timelapse photos). What you need to do next is to merge all these photos into one single image using Lighten blending mode in Photoshop or any StarTrail Application that you can download from the web. Stars keep moving throughout the night, by combining all the stars photos that you have captured, the stars movement become the Star Trails.
When you keep photographing at the same location for quite a long time, you start to get bored and lose your interest. Well, sometimes you just have to change your shooting locations. You can make a short trip by going somewhere slightly further from your usual area or plan an overseas trip to one of the countries that you have on your bucket list. If you love cityscape, you can consider cities like Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Singapore, Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). Or, visiting countries like Iceland, New Zealand, Indonesia for some natural landscape. There are plenty of beautiful places out there.
I love shooting alone and I know there are others that tend to prefer that way too but it is more enjoyable when you have a companion. With a group of friends that sharing the same passion, not only you take the photo together, you also share the joy, the excitement or even the failure together. It much more fun to do something together with friends. Other than that, you also learn and improve together.
Sometimes, when you reach a certain skill level, you may find yourself lack of improvement and be unsatisfied with your works, a bottleneck. If that really happened, it is advisable to give a try by attending a workshop or maybe purchasing video tutorial from a photographer that you admired. Different photographers having different styles and their own philosophy, not only you learn new techniques from them, you also learn to see from their viewpoint. This kind of insights from others might be what you need for you to break through the bottleneck.
Lastly, you might just feel weary with your current shooting routine. In that case, why not give yourself a break, temporary put down your camera and focus on something else, so that you can come back with a fresh mind later.
That’s all my advises, hopefully, they able give you some ideas to set up your new target.
Happy shooting!
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Comments (1)
Just what I needed although I already decided to give astrophotography/star trails a try – just as soon as the temperature in Serbia goes at least above 10 Celsius 🙂