I'm angry and need to ventilate..

dankopp wrote in post #15226116
I took a look at your website and you have some interesting shots there. I don't believe that you have exhausted the possibilities in your area in one year. I grew up in a small town in Indiana and found plenty to shoot: sports, wildlife, scenery, lakes, graveyards, etc.

I now live in Chicago, but people like me pay thousands of dollars to visit Europe to see picturesque towns like the one you have in this photo: http://bentphotos.se/p​ost/34052645482

Look at this guy's street shots: http://newsblogs.chica​gotribune.com/shooting​-from-the-hip/ (You may have to scroll down to see them, but most of his posts are street photography.) Yes he is in Chicago, but he could be anywhere, he just has a great eye for composition.

I havent posted my floating, light, macro projects.. i think they are boring and awful.. alot of earlier projects are left out of my tumblr site. There is much more that i've done than what i'm showing on tumblr.

I guess it turns out like that, if your not living in that part of the world.. you want to go there, i bet someone living next door to the Pyramids think they are pretty boring by now and would like to travel somewhere else..

Yea, that guy take great photos.. of the U.S.A president.. or on the streets of Chicago.. See where i'm going with this

bent toe wrote in post #15226100
I feel you man, getting time off for yourself isent easy with a family.. but fortunally i can do that.
My wife is in London this weekend.. i envy her alot (she is there shopping), would be a great place for some photography.. i guess i can calm my hunger for scenery if i travelled somewhere for a week.
It's just getting vacation from work, the money, travelling alone or take the whole family and so on.

I know these issues.......I've done them, you juggle time/family and schedule things - that's how you make it work. If it were THAT easy then everybody would be doing it . If your wife is in London shopping then money doesn't sound like the issue, but I understand time and vacation constraints.

Here is what I do.

I live in large city and I realize that is not the case with you. But I work in the city, full time. I've found some interesting areas over the years......places under construction, demolition, going through change..... so I ask myself:

What would this same old place, that people pass by every day without giving a second a thought, look like early in the morning just as the sun is coming up.......or maybe 10 minutes prior to that when you have a nice sky glow? Or what about the same old place at that same time, but during the winter when you have a DIFFERENT QUALITY of light? Or the Spring, summer? You see where I'm going with this.

The low hanging fruit of visual imagery has been pretty well picked. The modern PS and dSLR has made it very easy for EVERYBODY to take decent/good pictures.

What does that leave you with? I'll tell you:
1. Your eye
2. Your personal concepts
3. Your unique visualization and ideas.

Two years ago I had a near lethal illness with a lengthy hospital stay and surgery that laid me up for a while. I don't say this for pity, but to set the stage. Once I got back on my feet I was unable to do the waling around that is key to my work. I was indoors a lot. This forced me to consider the world within very limited physical constraints.

The windows in my office building were my few avenues to outside photography and the world. Unwilling to stop my photography I began exploring some of the same old boring views, but under very different lighting on different days. I began noticing things I never saw before. I came up with some of my best work in recent years. Some of it was garbage, but other shots intrigued me. And it was different than what I'd previously captured.

Look - think - think again - then shoot.

bent toe wrote in post #15226044
Very good ideas, especially about reflections and different perspectives on already photographed things.

Nice macro photos

Thanks and good luck. Don't worry, take your time, your inspiration will come back.

bz919 wrote in post #15226062
Your post beat me by about 2 minutes. Great shots!

Thanks!

We can trade places... Sure, NYC is interesting but it is also all the same (buildings, homeless people, starving artists, graffiti, and cars).

I think you are burned out. No amount of great subjects, or amazing places will overcome that. Step away from it for a little while, find something else to do with your time. Read, paint, hike ... without a camera. Let your brain recharge and your creativity will follow.

Travel dude.

150 photos a day! No wonder you are burned out. I would get tired and bored looking at that many photos a day. Soon everything would start to look the same. Slow down, step back, take a deep breath.

I feel the same kind of frustration living in the middle of farm-country in flat boring northern Indiana. But, I think you meant to 'vent', as in vent some steam - to lower the pressure. Ventilate implies some use of firearms, does it not? That is a whole different kind of shooting. Please don't go down that road.

take pictures of your nose, vary the light and it'll be fun. when you're done with that, move on to fingers, toes, ears, etc. this will keep you busy for months.

bent toe wrote in post #15225942
For over a year i been taking at least 1 new photograph EVERY day. They are all plain everyday photos, ANYONE could take them. It's unfair for me, living in Chicago Illinois, of course anyone that lives in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Uppsala, or any other major city will take 10 x better/intresting photos than me.
Imagine living in Örebro.. it would take you years to photograph everything there and new stuff always arises.

My point is, after a year.. i've taken photos of everything worth photographing in Chicago.. EVERYTHING. My main intrest is street photography. I'm bored and angry.. i've travelled to nearby towns... but it's not Nacka or Jönköping.

My hobby is dying on me.. it's not fun any more, sure i could save up a few thousand dollars and travel a week to Helsingborg.. but then what? I barely scratched the surface when talking about everything you can shot in Helsingborg.

My pre-conditions are crap compared to some one living in Helsingborg when it comes to street photography.

Any ideas on what to do?

I'm sure i can't be the only one feeling like this, must be hundreds of photographers feeling the same thing, we can't all be living in major city?

Edited with a different point of view.

Trust me, I lived in Chicago and it's not all it's cracked up to be. I would have loved to visit some cities in Sweden and photographed something different. Chicago, New York, L.A., Tokyo, they are all pretty much the same and once you hit the few interesting sites, you'll get bored of those as well quickly enough.

Places are only interesting to you when they are new and different. Once you are there for a while then they become routine. For example, I worked just down the street from the Chicago water tower, a famous landmark. It amazed me that people would actually come up and take pictures of it. It's just a stone water tower after all and there are millions of pictures of it already. Plus, I saw it every day so it was uninteresting and boring. But to these people who had never seen it it was interesting and new. But move here and eat lunch in the park looking at it every day for a year and to them it would also become common and boring.

Living in the flat and usually grey Netherlands, I can somewhat relate to not living in a very street photography worthy place. However, the great US cities don't really draw me in all that much. I'm always very fond of the street photography I see from Singapore, Malaysia and places like that.

Still, embrace what you have, and maybe you can tap some inspiration out of looking what others can make of their surroundings like here: http://www.flickr.com/​search/?q=Sweden&ss=2&​s=int

As others have indicated, it's not about the content or quality of the image, but about the artistic feeling invoked. Slow down and examine emotions - yours and other peoples - and try to capture an image that "speaks" that emotion.

Much easier to say than to do - but you seem passionate ... look more deeply.

Kind of reminds me of past artists and writers who painted/wrote much... in search of something else. You may not be able to do a move to Tahiti like Gauguin, but mentally you can change your own point-of-view.

My wife gets tired of us visiting the same areas often. She tells me its boring, how can I like taking photos of the same places all the time.
My reply, it is different all the time. Weather, lighting conditions, animals, people, are some of the things that are different from day to day. You can visit the same place all the time, but if you really notice, there are differences every time.
If you can't notice the difference, then maybe it is time to take a break. Just a little.
But I have to say, I really like your photos. Maybe not every one, hell, I don't like every one of mine, but you have some awesome ones.

sounds like paradise to me.


NYC, LA... are nice places to have nearby like the source of the crowd. Actually live in megapolis is hell for me. Done it in 10+ million people city for decades, get opportunity to escape nine years ago and don't want to look back.

But, every time I'm going for work to Toronto I enjoy the street photography opportunity.
My town Main street looks like this most of the days: