Day 188: Mundane

I have been in a bit of a photography rut lately (hence the lack of posts through the end of April and most of May). I am not sure if it’s because it’s become oppressively hot in North Florida so getting out and shooting is limited to the hour before and the hour after sunrise or because I feel that I’ve photographed most of the interesting stuff that you can safely and legally photograph in this town, my guess is it’s a combination of both.

A friend and I were discussing this issue over the weekend, so in an effort to get the creativity flowing again, I challenged him to find an interesting way to photograph an electrical outlet, and told him that I would do the same. He scoffed a bit, wondering how on Earth he was going to make an electrical outlet interesting, but I was convinced that we could do it if we tried.

The photo below is my attempt to bring some character to an electrical outlet in my house. Obviously, I edited the crap out of this photo. I tried presets but none of them really spoke to me. Finally,  I started fiddling around in Lightroom, messing with contrast and grain until I got a gritty feel that I really liked. It’s not often that I intentionally bump up the grain in a photo, it was fun! I like this shot because when I see it, I see two shocked faces — get it, shocked = electricity – hahahaha, I slay me!

All kidding aside, one of my cousins was giving me a pep talk recently and reminded me that it is very important to practice the art of photography, “even if you are are taking a picture of a pile of dog poo…or you’re in a boring town, the challenge is there to always take better pics…” I’m not convinced that this is what he meant, and I wouldn’t consider this a good photo, but the point is that I forced myself to do something, I challenged myself to look at everyday items with a photographers eye – exercising my photography muscles so-to-speak. The bottom line is, my photography will not improve if I don’t practice. Plus, it was fun playing around and trying to find ways to make something everyone has seen before a little more interesting.

For the record, my friend did post a photo of an electrical outlet on his page that next day and it was really good, it was different than mine for sure, and when it comes down to it, that’s truly the great thing about being a photographer, we can all look at the same item but see it in different ways so the story is never the same.

Do you ever get photographer’s block?

What do you do if you get bored with your everyday surroundings, but can’t just pick up and go whenever you want?

Nikon D7200
ISO 1250
105mm
f/5.6
1/15 second