A Few New Year's Resolutions For Photographers

Here we go again…with another year over and a new one just about to begin! And I thought it would make sense to share some Photographer’s New Year Resolutions with you. I don’t always find the inspiration to go out and photograph Mother Nature’s creations and I am positively sure that I ain’t the only person riding that train…it’s never easy as an artist to find inspiration when conditions are far from being ideal. Please, keep reading and I am sure you will find inspiration and potentially you might take one of these resolutions and make it your own for the new year to come!

Did you know that the month of January is the month that gyms sell the most memberships? Yeah…a lot of people tend to take on impossible tasks for the new year…things they just can’t accomplish. The few points listed below aren’t anything impossible…in fact, if you love photography but often put mental barriers on your self for not practicing your beloved hobby, then these points should serve to help you to become a better photographer. Keep reading and start getting inspired:

NO SUCH THING AS BAD LIGHT…

There truly is no such thing as bad light. To be honest with you, this is probably the one thing us nature and landscape photographers seem to struggle most with: Bad Light and Bad Weather! But in reality, it’s when things can unexpectedly turn to the most positive.

In fact, I love moody and flat light. It gives me the freedom to do so many different things. It gives me freedom to photograph all day long. When the light is flat, it is very unlikely to change quickly which allows me to enjoy myself all day, explore all day and bag some extra images. I often say it, mid day light will suck most of the time. With the sun directly overhead at noon, it will create some very harsh unflattering shadows and the contrast becomes atrocious.

Another thing I often say: Rain or Shine, you will find me outside! I get the point that it’s not always pleasant to go out when it’s raining or windy…but I guarantee that you will look at things with a very different eye. Try to embrace the atmosphere brought to us by bad weather. After any storm comes beautiful light. You just need to be ready to capture it. It’s raining and you don’t like getting wet? Bring an umbrella. It’s cold and windy outside? Put on a wind breaker jacket and go head-to-head against anything Mother Nature can throw at you!

TAKE THE MINIMALIST APPROACH

To compliment the previous paragraph, bad weather might not give you an opportunity to capture your usual grand scene. Maybe the fog prevents you from seeing the mountains you initially wanted to capture. To me, that is far from being a problem. I will simply mount my longer lens on my camera body, my 100-400mm and then I will start looking for minimalist or abstract subjects. I have always found that using a long lens is not only challenging but also very fun when you start creating interesting images out of small parts of said grand scenes.

And trust me, it takes time to start being happy with what you capture when giving a shot at Minimalist and Abstract Photography. It took me years. In each and every workshop I host, I always try to push my customers into shooting those kind of images. Their reaction is truly priceless. They go from "Meh, I don’t like it" to "Oh WOW! That is one cool form of photography!" Just give yourself some time and you will truly enjoy Intimate and Abstract Photography.

GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE

As landscape photographers, we tend to put ourselves into a pattern, our comfort zone. If we excel at doing something, we will often stick to that something and repeat it over and over and over again. Here’s a few examples: I love to photograph scenes in vertical orientation, I love to capture scenes with my ultra-wide angle lens…and so on. What I like to do, after capturing my usual comfort zone type of image, I will explore further and try to do the exact opposite of what I just did. After capturing a scene in vertical orientation, I will position my camera in horizontal orientation, fine-tune the composition and focal length and then I will capture a second image. Most of the time, I end up liking that second image more than the first one. Doing so is very good for our creativity.

ONLY BRING ONE BODY AND ONE LENS

And speaking of comfort zone, the one thing we always do is to carry a whole variety of lens in our camera bag. This makes things so easy! If we don’t have the right lens on, we can just swap! Right? One thing I love to do when I go on shorter hikes and I don’t want to bring my heavy camera bag, I will choose one lens and one camera body and that will be the only piece of equipment I will bring. This will not only make the hike much more pleasant by not carrying a heavy load but this will also force myself to use what ever I have with me at that specific moment.

I can guarantee that you will at some point regret that you accepted to do that New Year’s Resolution…you will tell yourself: If only I brought that lens instead. The good thing about limiting yourself to a specific setup is to not only push yourself out of your comfort zone but also to unleash a new level of creativity from within. You didn’t bring a wide enough lens? Try doing panoramic images to compensate for the missing width!

EDIT AT LEAST ONE IMAGE PER WEEK

We often hear people say that they feel rusty after not playing golf for a too long period of time? Or maybe feeling uncomfortable riding those skies after a long summer break? Well, the same applies for Photoshop! We can definitely have Photoshop rust for not using it for a long period of time. And it becomes really frustrating. Imagine learning a ton of new functions and features only to forget them all after two weeks of not using them! I try to keep myself rust-free by editing at least one image or testing new things on different canvases or simply playing around in Photoshop at least once a week! I have customers that simply gave up on Photoshop because they just keep forgetting everything all the time. It is truly sad because Photoshop is the most powerful editing software any photographer can ever use to edit and improve their images. And the key to success with Photoshop is simply to use it! Practice makes perfect!

And please, don’t tell me you have no images to edit…re-edit an old image of yours. Try new techniques to improve what you did years ago. Better than that, your comfort zone always brings you back to Lightroom? Edit one image in Lightroom then and later try to do the same in Photoshop. Trust me, when mastered, Photoshop is a much more powerful software. I am well aware of its complexity though…back when I was a student and trying to learn Photoshop, I almost quit school because it. It is an overwhelming software and can be very intimidating…but you have to give yourself a chance! All I am asking is to edit at least one image per week.

…IN CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I know that this article is more on the short side compared to my usual articles but since it is the Christmas Holidays, I understand that you prefer to party with your family more than to read a long Blog Article! Right? One thing is for sure, I sincerely hope that these points stated above will inspire you to bring your photography to new heights for the oncoming year!

I wish you all a wonderful New Year. I hope you will accomplish all the great things you desire. And more importantly, I wish you a health of steel in order to be able to move mountains! Without health, nothing else is possible!

Thank you very much for your constant support. And HAPPY NEW YEAR!