Visual Monotony - Overcoming the Visual Boredom of the Familiar

Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Photo 5 Photo 6 Photo 7 Photo 8

Want to shake up your visual awareness? It’s easy… simply visit an exotic locale. Nothing snaps our visual creativity back to life faster than a good dose of the unfamiliar. Since most of us can’t jet off to St. Lucia, Madagascar, or the Pribilofs on a whim, we need to overcome the visual humdrum of home turf. We are often told that the best photos are made in our own backyard. It’s true…but doesn’t everybody else seem to have a nicer backyard than we do? Here are a few tips to help overcome the ‘blocks’ of visual familiarity.

Easier Said than Done

Visual boredom is a tough jar to break. A few years back I visited Baja California and kayaked the Sea of Cortez. I was keyed up, visually awake and keen on photography. One of my favorite photos from the trip was of two gulls soaring backlit in a sun-drenched sky (Photo 1).

Funny thing was I could have gotten a similar photo back home at the local MacDonald’s where gulls patrol the Golden Arches looking for parking lot French fries. At home, gulls floating in a blue sky are ‘everyday’; in Baja the same birds are ‘magical’. Somehow we need to see magic in the mundane.

Create Variation

One of the easiest ways to beat visual monotony is to create visual variety at home. In the depths of a cold Alberta winter the strongest visual craving I have is for a good dose of green. If I can’t trek off to the Amazon, I’ll bring the Amazon into my living room. A visit to a plant store brings home exotic greenery and flowers. I’ll often just shoot the plants using window light and immerse myself for hours in the fresh visuals (Photo 2).

One of my favorite types of light is backlighting and to recreate the look of sunlight shining through a leaf in the rainforest, I used a slide projector and focused the strong beam of light on the opposite side of leaf. To add to the effect of the tropics I added an Amazon Beetle (a mounted insect specimen) onto the leaf to provide an interesting silhouette (Photo 3). The effect for me was a hot, humid natural history photo made in the dark depths of a 40 below Alberta night.

Seek Variation

Chances are good that even around your home there are many little places you have yet to visit. One of my favorite activities is a Sunday drive to a local spot I have never seen before. Even if the location isn’t visually stunning, the simple act of getting out and exploring can inspire good photography. There are gems of images waiting to be captured in local city parks, empty suburban land, nearby rural areas, zoos, botanical gardens, and river valleys or lakefronts. Sitting at home watching TV won’t net you any fresh visual experiences. Often just the act of getting out with your camera is enough to jump start visual creativity.

Set aside Time for Photography

If you only grab your camera around home when something ‘inspiring’ happens, chances are good the camera will go unused. Setting aside a block of time for photography at least once a week will force you to go out and ‘look’ for images. The act of concentrating on just photography will purge all other worries about chores and work and focus your mind on visual creativity. Often the best photos come from photographing the everyday and mundane in a fresh way.

Self-Assignments

Personally I find the best way to overcome ‘visual boredom’ is an assignment. You can pick a single subject and try your hand at illustrating this subject in as many different ways as possible. For example, I live in the ranching country of southwest Alberta. The landscape is mostly farmland and rangeland and the countryside is a grid of barbwire fences. For a nature shooter, nothing is probably more boring, and more of a visual eyesore than the barbwire fence. So I took on the task of trying to photograph the hidden beauty of this subject (see Photos 4, 5, and 6 for a small sample).

Another idea for a self-assignment came to me when I realized 80% of my work is shot with a wide-angle lens. To stretch my visual experiences, I decided to go and shoot some scenes using only my 300mm lens. I chose to go to Banff National Park (1 ½ hours away) and shoot the Rockies with the telephoto lens. I found it very difficult to adjust my ‘seeing’ from grand mountain landscapes to ‘intimate’ views. But once I did, I came away with images very different from what I normally shoot (Photo 7).

Another favorite ‘visual kick start’ of mine is to try a new technique on familiar subjects. For instance, multiple exposure, Orton Imagery, infrared photography, light painting, and long exposure techniques come to mind. I have often shot images of highways winding through the landscape. But in the past I have always shot these as static compositions with camera firmly on tripod. Lately, I have mounted my camera on the bumper of my vehicle and played with making images of roads while driving. It is great fun trying to anticipate compositions and shutter speed effects while I travel the highways around home tripping the shutter with a long cable release from the driver’s side window (Photo 8).

Overcoming the boredom of the everyday is difficult but with a little effort you’ll be rewarded with interesting and exciting imagery. Yes, it would be great just to jet off to Nepal or Chile, but there is a lifetime of amazing stuff to shoot in your own backyard, if you are open to seeing it.

Darwin Wiggett - NPN 343

DW-NPN 0343

About the author...

Darwin Wiggett and his wife Anita Dammer are the proprietors of Natural Moments Photography. Anita has 17 years experience as staff photographer for the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and is currently the editor-in-chief of Photo Life magazine. Darwin has been shooting stock since 1990, and has two books published by Whitecap in Vancouver; Darwin Wiggett Photographs Canada and Seasons in the Rockies. Darwin's newest book, How to Photograph the Canadian Rockies will hit the shelves in the spring of 2005. Together they specialize in landscape, nature, animal, humor and kid photography and are represented by various stock agencies worldwide. Their primary stock agent is First Light in Toronto, Canada. You can view more of Darwin's work at www.darwinwiggett.com and on his online portfolio.

Comments on NPN nature photography articles? Send them to the editor.