Professional travel and landscape photographer Kav Dadfar has put together this great article over at Digital Photography School.
I have personally found some of these exercises extremely helpful – especially when I’ve been in a creative rut. That’s when I always try and find new ways to get back into photography in a fun and interesting way.
Take Limited Memory Card Space
One of the great advantages of digital photography is that you don’t have to worry about wasting film when taking a photo. Often with enough memory cards, you can capture as many photos as you want and still have room to spare. However, this has also led to people snapping away in the hope that one of the photos they have taken has turned out okay rather than thinking about each individual photo. If you could only take 24 photos in a day, you would be much more selective about when you click the shutter.
But this is also a great way to train yourself to really think about composition, lighting, and focus before taking a photo. Simply either take a small memory card that only holds a few photos, or set yourself a limit of 20 photos that you are allowed to come home with. You will have to delete one to add another when you have reached your limit.
Work to a Time Limit
Another great way to improve your efficiency as a photographer is to set yourself a time limit. Give yourself a certain amount of time and you’ll suddenly become much more organized and efficient at getting around and doing things. You need to have an idea of what you want to photograph (i.e. photograph a specific market in an hour) and with practice, you will become faster and better at capturing great photos every time.
Don’t do any Post-Production
There’s no doubt that every photo does benefit from some level of post-production. Sometimes that might just be cropping and straightening, other times to more extensive retouching and colour corrections. But a lot of photographers also use post-production as a get out of jail free card in that they take a photo with the thought of fixing it later in post-production.
But if you really want to improve your photography, you need to learn to take great photos, not create them. The reality is that a great photo should only need a small bit of post-production to enhance it. So set yourself a task of showcasing your work without doing any processing.
Photograph in the Worst Conditions
This is a bit of a contradiction because, as a photographer, you should always look to photograph everything in the best possible way and in the best possible light. However, as a way of training yourself to deal with different conditions, this is a great way to learn to adapt because sometimes you won’t have the luxury of time. If you are required to photograph something specific you may not get another chance so you would need to find a way around the problem.
For example, if you are interested in photographing landscapes, go out at midday or cloudy weather when the conditions might not be ideal. This may mean that you won’t be able to capture the usual vistas that you would normally during the golden hour. So you will have to get creative find other things to capture that still tell the story.
Read the full article with even more tips over at Digital Photography School.
Source: Digital Photography School
