Same Old, Same Old...

Thinking a lot of your pictures look pretty much the same - time to break out of a rut?
The obvious thing to do is change subject matter but lets say that you like photographing mushrooms and what you really want is a different way to photograph them. You could resort to tricks - prism filters and the like but it might be better to analyse your current style and see how you might change it.

First a list of possible characteristics of a photograph.

Contrast
Darkness
subject centering
subject positioning
camera alignment
focal length
height of the camera
lighting conditions
subject surround

Have a good look at the prints you have now that you think are too similar. Perhaps its because they are all mushroom pictures but maybe its the similarity of the above listed image characteristics.

Last weekend I noted that the photographer shooting with me quickly set up his tripod at a convenient height and spent no time at all checking higher or lower, left or right before pointing the camera and taking his picture. I suggested he have a look from the lowest position on his tripod and he was quite pleased with the change in perspective.

Getting back to our mushroom example, perhaps it's your style to look down on the mushroom and focus closely so that the mushroom fills the frame. You might consider getting down on your stomach with a mini tripod and looking up to the mushroom, or backing off and including some of the surround, or go the other way and have the mushroom fill the frame entirely so there is no edge visible and the image is no longer obviously a mushroom - more of an abstract - no harm in letting your viewers use their brains and wonder what you are photographing.

Perhaps you pride yourself on a nicely balanced print with good spread of light and dark tones - what about deliberately printing really dark, or really light - this doesn't mean simply lightening or darkening the print - you don't want a muddy dark print, you want a richly dark print - not at all the same thing, the latter requiring careful handling of the highlights and the right contrast for the darker areas.

You could bring along a card to bounce a little light into the shadows, or maybe you should get out really early in the morning when there is still dew, or frost. If not in a national park, what about taking some mushrooms home to photograph in a 'studio'. Hell, you could even copy Edward Weston and photograph it in an old tin funnel.

Go back to the list of image characteristics and see if there isn't a way to shake up your photography style, while not compromising the quality of your images.