How to fall back in love with photography – Mixing Up Genres

Are you falling out of love with photography? Do you suffer from photographer’s block?

This is one in a series of articles on ways you could re-ignite your passion for photography. One way to do this is to mix up your photographic genres. If you do landscape photography, try your hand at portraiture.

However, what happens if your personality doesn’t really suit a particular genre of photography? In this article I am going to suggest one way of trying a slightly different genre that you might feel more comfortable with. Switching from still life to a kind of street photography.

Street photography

As a street photographer you are on the move, reacting instinctively to the changing scenes, photographing constantly to get the image. You will need to think quickly, be on the move all the time and ready to capture the image. Street photography is also very gregarious – you are in public interacting with fellow human beings. You will need to be a bit of an extrovert, confident of photographing other people without their permission, possibly even getting in close and invading their personal space. Instead of spending time checking your camera settings you will need to be sure that your camera is already set up – otherwise you might miss the picture.

Still life photography

Still life is more perhaps more contemplative. You will have time to create your photograph and make changes to it until you get it just right. You will have more control over your own subject as you can put it together yourself rather than see it appear before your eyes out on the street. Your photography will become slower – you might want to put your camera on a tripod. You might also spend more time thinking about the exposure and focusing rather than relying on instinct.

Still life and street

These two types of photography require two different types of personality – the extrovert and the introvert. If you are an introvert you might not feel comfortable taking photographs of people. I have written about my experiences as a shy street photographer before: Street. In this article I am going to suggest another way of trying out street photography – mashing genres together.

If you are a still life photographer you might find it hard to try out street photography. But there is one way you could do it. Street photography does not necessarily have to mean people – it could mean evidence of people. Instead of photographing the people to tell the story of the street photograph what they leave behind. Abandoned objects on the roadside, perhaps left out for the rubbish collection or just discarded. In a way it is a kind of still life photography – it is just that the objects are found and photographed in situ rather than assembled elsewhere. This could be a gateway for either the still life or street photographer to try the alternative.

My experiences

Here are a few examples of my experiences in this area: a street sweeper’s cart, a blue glove, an abandoned coffee cup on a wall, and a red bauble on a Christmas tree left out on the side.

In all of them except for the Christmas Tree I left the object in situ photographing it as was. For the Christmas Tree I took it a stage further bringing my own bauble and decorating the tree for the purposes of the image. Other ideas could be abandoned bicycles or, in the autumn, fallen leaves.

Your experiences?

What are you experiences? Have you tried this technique and how did you get on? Post your comments below or share your images on Instagram, tagging @stephentaylorphotography so I can see them.