How do you challenge your creativity? - Day 130

How do you challenge your creativity?

Being a photographer - full time or part time - is very competitive. We all have the same equipment, which we can buy with no margin to the dealers due to the commodity nature of photographic equipment, and we all face clients that more or less have the same requirements and want a low price for maximum quality.

If you are an average photographer trying to survive in the main stream photographic business, then you will not make enough money to make a living.

How do you find your own voice, promote it and get the jobs? I can't give you an answer but the small lesson I have learned it to constantly challenge your own photographic abilities. It's not about how you master your equipment, but how you SEE an envision a photo opportunity. Applying the tools afterwards is just the basics.

I'm in no way a special gifted photographer. On the contrary -  I've been annoyed with my own mediocrity for long. Yes - I can make technical perfect - but boring photos. But I want to make something that echoes for long. A visual statement that is unique and stand out of the incredible noisy crowd of "wannabe" photographer.

I'm so tired of stumbling into webpages of www.xyz_photography.com, where people who just have bought a digital camera starts to promote themself as Photographer. They don't sell anything and they just get some kind of ego satisfaction by seeing their photos on a websites that is accessible for everybody but that nobody visits.

I probably among the group of wannabe photographers I'm describing above - but I've been photographing for 35 years, and I'm still working hard to find my own voice.

The two photos I've posted today was captured while I visited the Nikon Denmark office to collect a Nikon Speedlight SB-910 for test on my blog - NikonNyt.

It was a normal boring neighbourhood but I tried hard to find a scene that would stand out. I hope I succeded.