Sunday, June 1, 2014

Always stay flexible

It is always a good idea to stay as flexible as possible in everything that you do. This is especially true of the creative arts, as trends change and so too do your own taste and preference to what you are creating.

This was brought home to me recently as an interesting phenomena concerning my photography "specialization". As I really like landscape style work (natural and urban) I thought it best to work towards this as my specialization - so many say to be successful you must specialize in a certain type of photography - but after a short while an odd thing occurred; I stopped taking photos. And when I did grab my camera to take any photos, it was not anything landscape themed. Instead it was to record our newest furry addition to our household - a young male rat terrier dog called Jax.

Jax the rat terrier

Other than puppy pics, the only other photos I have taken lately have been some headshots and portraits to practice techniques I've been learning from watching video classes on CreativeLive. And I can highly recommend the courses on their site.

Lisa

Above is one of my (new) lighting practice sessions consisting of a softbox to Lisa's right, just above eye level; a reflector to her left at eye level and approx. 45° to fill the shadows; a second speedlight behind her to illuminate the background. 

With all these things going on, I made the decision to drop my specialization attempts for now and "reclassify" as a generalist photographer and just shoot what appeals to me whenever I pick up my camera. Who knows, I might get really good at people photography and head that way, or I may end up shooting something completely different. At this time I couldn't really say, so until that day comes I'm just going to stay flexible.