It is very easy to go stale when you find yourself constantly repeating yourself. Get out of your neighborhood—where everything is far too common. I did a four day trip to the prairies a couple of weeks back, and have a flood of new images that I have been posting as cover images on Facebook. Overwhelming reaction to many, and I have barely begun. Japanese friends seem to be particularly fascinated. Prairie is vast and minimal. I would expect much of Japan to be the exact opposite. I have also used the panoramic function of the Fuji cameras and it too has drawn very positive reactions. Give it a try.
Earlier in the year, I also hit some towns well off the tourist trail in east-central Alberta—much less prosperous than towns to the west. There has been little incentive or money to "modernize", so a lot of relatively old architecture remains. Economists predict the current boom will last for decades and I expect a lot of early western architecture will vanish. Many of the towns still look like a movie set for Westerns, but this is authentic architecture as was the style. The countryside is also well seasoned with abandoned pioneer houses. I posted one today and a photographer in the Maritimes was more excited than I had ever known him to be. Very minimal.
Clarence John Laughlin published his book, Ghosts Along the Mississippi in 1948. These were surreal photos mostly of plantation houses, mostly abandoned, but not in all cases. What was unique was the power of the emotions they evoked. When I bought a copy, it took me many days to get through it—the images were so overwhelming that after a few pages, I had to put it down. Old architecture in Alberta goes back to the early 20th century. Laughlin's plantation houses were a century or so earlier. One might think that architecture would be a lousy subject for provoking feelings, but Laughlin proved it is not so.
Within a day's journey from your home, you have churches, castles and manor houses going back to medieval times. Trying to get evocative images of them could keep me shooting for a lifetime. I found Edinburgh on Google Maps, clicked on a random town just a short distance away—Rosyth—and bingo! A wonderful castle—Pitreavie Castle. Shot on a night with a bit of fog in the air, it would be hair-raising. (It has just gots to be a-haunted!) Above all, it is totally accessible, on a city street creatively named Castle Dr., just a stone's throw from a paralyzingly boring—if somewhat upscale—housing development. Go Forth across the Firth and you are there. Key is to shoot when other photographers would not. Go at twilight, on a foggy day, in the rain, at night. Anyone can shoot in bright sunlight.
Of course you have your own castle, and going Street View, I see loads of stuff on the streets below that would inspire a shutter finger. Crank up the ISO and open the lens then go into the night, shooting with ambient light in available darkness. Go a step farther, work off tripod at low ISO settings with very long exposures at night, for a view that the eye can not see! The X100 works extremely well for this, as does the XP1. Time exposures can be set for up to 30 seconds, and Bulb can do 60 minutes for moonlit landscapes with star trails. It even has a digital counter on the LCD to help you time the exposure. The neat thing is that if there are people strolling on the street, once you get to around ten second exposures, they vanish. They are never in one spot long enough to register in the exposure. If they do pause, the become like ghosts. Neat!
While new equipment can be inspiring, without fresh material, the inspiration goes flat all too quickly. Without fresh approaches, any material becomes common with time. New vistas, new approaches keeps one creative.
On the other hand, sometimes one just needs a time-out. I have been doing a lot of photography and 3D modeling and rendering, but not much music for the past year or so. When I go back to it, I will be fresh again. I just don't worry about it, much less beat myself up over it.
