Comments on: Where do You Go for Inspiration for Your Photography?

By: MeiTeng

MeiTeng — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:10:19 +0000

I am an amateur. Inspiration can come in many forms..one of which is setting up an assignment for myself..like reading up on a new technique and trying it out. Recently, I ventured into the busy street to try out the panning technique. It was worth it!

Whenever I come across interesting places of travel in the local newspaper, I try to make it a point to visit as it gives me an opportunity to improve my photography.

By: Ziv

Ziv — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 10:43:15 +0000

take a trip… google for a good place (antiques/blossoming flowers/mountains/rivers/just a place for hiking). go into the car. grab some friends. put food and camera equipment in the bag and just go hiking with friends or family and wait for the pictures to come.

you are most likely to find panoramas, rivers,flowers and just people.

By: Liisa

Liisa — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:27:16 +0000

I like taking my camera with me and walk around town, focusing on something random for few seconds and sense it- if it clicks, it’s the next thing to take photographs from, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And river- it always inspires me and I love walking near it.

By: Jorgeq

Jorgeq — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:26:14 +0000

It’s a simple question yet somewhat difficult to answer. I always make sure to have my Point and shoot camera in my car. I get inspired from everything around me.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 21:50:32 +0000

Luckily for me Washington, D.C. is filled with inspiration, I use my photoblog http://www.93autumns.com to showcase my work and I post a photo a day. That provides me with both motivation and inspiration. Surfing other photoblogs can also be inspiring.

By: Lauran

Lauran — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 06:59:41 +0000

Being somewhat of a beginner, I open up my camera’s manual… there’s always some control or technique in there that I haven’t yet explored and it gives me something to experiment with.
Or sometimes I do much lamer things like try to capture the essence of my sleeping cat or add to my collection of bizarre grafiti that I notice around town.

By: Eunice

Eunice — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:54:52 +0000

Something that my old photography instructor suggested was to grab a book of haiku and choose one at random and interpret it photographically.

By: John Wesley

John Wesley — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:50:18 +0000

Thanks for the response. I hope I didn’t sound too critical. After all, us readers get all the great content for free. Keep up the good work.

Also, great redesign! The site is now much more navigable.

By: Pewari

Pewari — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:12:28 +0000

Darren – just wanted to thank you for this post, it’s just what I needed to get a kick up the backside and get out of my current rut.

I actually appreciate the user generated content – I don’t get time to read as much as I would like, and I think it’s great that here and a problogger I can have summaries of what’s doing the rounds in terms of ideas, and then have the option of looking more deeply into things that interest me. I’m sure the style isn’t for everyone, but whose blog can claim to please every reader all the time, eh?

Now if you can do a “get out of the rut” series over on problogger as well, that’d be great ;)

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 05:49:56 +0000

Shruti – at this point there’s no email for assignments – its a matter of watching the assignment section in the forum.

John Wesley – I guess it depends what you mean by ‘a lot’.

Here at DPS there are around 210 posts on the blog. I’ve written about 190 of them (probably more). I do use some of the posts of reader from our forums and do invite guest posts from readers when I think they have expertise in the area (for example – you can expect to see some guest posts on photoshop techniques in the coming weeks, I’m no expert in photoshop so would rather get someone else in) but these are currently the minority of posts.

At ProBlogger I’d say it’s a similar proportion (in not even more dominated by my own posts). I do use guest posts from time to time there also, particularly to fill in when I’m on holidays or traveling.

I guess my opinion on user generated content is that it’s not all bad. I personally believe that the DPS community knows a lot more about photography (and the community at ProBlogger knows a lot more about blogging) than any one person within it does (and more than i do). So in that way I see it all as ‘expert analysis’ in a sense.

I’m not trying to build a blog where one person dominates the conversation – Instead I’m trying to build a community of knowledge.