Are You Limiting Your Photography Potential?

I watch a lot of YouTube photography videos and I find most of them to be entertaining and informative and they have taught me a lot about photography.

However, I am beginning to realise that, at times, I can allow YouTube videos to restrict my photography.

Let me explain.

Most of the popular photographers who have a successful YouTube channel tend to concentrate on one genre of photography. They might be exclusively landscape photographers or street photographers and, with a few notable exceptions, they tend not to deviate from their chosen genre.

Obviously, this is part of being a professional photographer and in many ways this is an advantage for the viewer as we, too, often tend to stick with one genre of photography and this approach can give us the best chance of meeting our photography learning needs and possibly reaching mastery in that genre.

Yet, for me, this approach can have its downsides too. I found myself alternating between street and landscape photography because of the videos I was watching on a regular basis and I felt that my photography was becoming restricted; that  to some extent I was boxing myself in to these genres and not being more experimental with my photography.

It is for this reason that I began to watch videos from photographers who take a more eclectic approach to photography. These photographers don't confine themselves to one genre; they are experimental, creative and original. Their work resonates with me and encourages me to find the freedom to photograph what feels right to me.

I realise that I love to photograph random things that don’t fit into a neat category:

I love to catch a pocket of light and take a 'light and shadow' picture.

I love to photograph an interesting shape that might mean nothing to anyone else, or something that might be unusual or out of place.

I love to photograph old things or random objects and scenes that I come across.

Often I don’t even know if the subjects will interest anyone else - I just like them.

It’s hard to find support for this type of photography and while I understand that, I also believe that it is important to follow our instincts in photography and not to restrict ourselves too much.

While most of us may have one or two dominant genres that we constantly go back to, I believe in diversifying occasionally, moving out of my comfort zone and just shooting what I enjoy for the sheer enjoyment of doing so. This also frees me to experiment with lots of different styles and subjects and can only be an advantage to my development as a photographer.

Next time you go out with your camera, take something different.

Look around, see what draws your eye and capture that image. Don’t worry if it’s not your regular type of image; be open to change and variation in your photography.

Or deliberately leave your camera behind, just take your phone with you and shoot what you see. This can be very freeing as it relieves us of the burden of having to capture a certain type of image.

You might be surprised at the results – I was!