How to Shoot Photos in "Boring" Places
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2020
- How to make good photos in boring places. I've challenged myself to make some interesting photos of the area I live. Each winter I go through a phase of feeling a bit unenthusiastic about getting out to make photos, when I shouldn't because winter sun tends to be my favorite type of light. By looking for light and shadow and objects and graphic compositions, I can find interesting photos even in my "boring" neighborhood.
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Realizing I left an extra sound effect in there when the dogs saw each other. Oh well... Not worth re-uploading :P
This is great. I challenge myself to look at the details of everyday life, but I get caught up in looking for the right street photography subject. You’ve motivated me to keep looking and make something out of every situation.
Thanks Scott. Hope it helps, man.
I know this video is old. I found myself burnt out thinking my neighborhood was too boring. Seeing someone else take such awesome pictures proving you CAN get good photos makes me want to go and shoot again. Its been a while. Very awesome video. Just subbed!
Thanks so much mate! Yes its tough in your own neighborhood. Don't give up though. It might take a few months but photos will start to appear.
I appreciate the sub!
Also one other thing again with my very limited experience here is that it's better to just take a picture than not take one. Because even if it's bad you'll still learn something from how it's bad. Even if you don't think you're a good photographer, if you take a picture that you thought might have been good, and it does not turn out good, you will at least have some understanding of what's bad about it.
This is awesome. I've been trying to motivate myself to go explore my hometown more with my camera. This video made me realize that I don't need to hop on a train to NYC in order to take interesting pictures. Thanks :)
Thank you! I felt the same way for a long time. I still wish I could just walk out my door and be on 5th Avenue whenever I feel like it. But there’s always things to photograph in a quiet place too :)
I live in NYC and find it boring to me. I wish I was in the “boring” areas to take pictures.
Great video, I do this all the time and it’s amazing how you look at your neighbourhood differently and see things you normally walk by. 👍
City Street Thank you 🙏 yeah, it’s a great little exercise.
This inspires me to go explore my town too. Its a small town, has some nice buildings and beautiful parks but never thought it could be beutiful too. I guees it seems legural after 18 years of living here.. BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS BTW! Thank you💗
Thanks so much! Yes, go explore those scenes you've seen a million times :)
Almost two thousand subscribers already! Seems like you just hit one thousand. Keep growing and taking photos!
Also, I think the chain link fence makes for some great effects!
Thanks Max! Yeah I’m pumped the channel started growing a bit faster. Hoping to keep it going 🤞
Got out today for some photos. After about six weeks of rain and snow, it was such a pleasure to be surrounded with light and shadows. We need to challenge ourselves to photograph in familiar environments. Thanks for the video.
Weeks of rain sounds like where I was from in Scotland. It wears you down after a while. It gets colder here in Philly but the upside is there’s more sun in the winter.
Very inspiring! Thanks!!
Glad you found it helpful :)
Honestly thank you for this video. it made me look at my small town completely differently and now i want to go out shooting again.
Glad it helped, thanks for watching!
Omg you just motivated me thanks for this video I'm going out tomorrow with my camera to photograph all my boring town, I'll make it interesting. You're awesome!
Thank you kindly 🙏 Have fun photographing!
Amazing how you play with the light and composition to produce these images. I definitely need to have my camera with me more often
Thanks for reminding me of this video, Kevin. I stopped shooting like this as much after our dog died. We recently rescued another dog and your comment was a nice reminder for me ✌️
@@TheLiamGordon I’m sorry to hear that. I have two dogs myself and can’t think of the day when either one of them is no longer with me. Hope you were able to create great memories with yours. I did also admire the ability for you to be able to take photos while walking your dog, I wouldn’t be able to do that with mine haha.
@@KevinHPhotography losing them is the worst, but having them around is the best. In the video you can see the rope leash we had that looped over his nose. It was the only leash we ever had that stopped him pulling too hard 😂
great as always
Thank you 🙏 I appreciate it
Very nice 👍 I need to do more of this, sometimes I walk around with my camera and don’t take shot. Thx for the inspiration, much appreciated
I sometimes walk around and shoot nothing too. Just carrying a camera is a great start though!
Quite some ideas !! Very interesting nd inspiring 💯
Thank you very much 🙏
Funny, I sat down to find inspiration after thinking of how boring my town can feel. Started watching your video and then I realize that you're in my town! Cheers to finding the unrecognized beauty within the mundane.
Thanks man! Yeah I moved away last year but I miss those morning walks around the neighborhood ✌️
really like your video, defo will give this a try in my local area. i'm pretty much a beginner and was struggling to find what im good at
Thanks for commenting! It can take a long time to find what you like so don’t get discouraged. Treat it as if you were learning to play guitar and practice as often as possible. Even the best photographers in the world fail 99% of the time. ✌️
Encouraging, thank you!
Thanks for watching! ✌️
Hello. Great idea of video. Thanks.
Glad you liked it! :)
I try to look around all the time, even without my camera. But I really need to have it with me everyday 😀 Thanks for the inspiration, great vlog. Subscribed 👌
I do the same thing and I kick myself when I don’t have it
I stopped the video every time you stopped on the street to think about what your next shoot will be about. Then analyzed the shoot itself. Well, I must confess, it's pretty hard to find those details in the "big picture". But I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for doing these videos.
Thanks for watching and for paying such close attention! It can be a very slow process of trial and error but it’s worth the practice.
this is great! help me better in this corona days
Thank you 🙏 I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Great vid, I have been doing something very similar in and around my village, this is only going to make me look even harder for the stuff i walk past day to day, I like the way you incorporate cars in some of your shots, just think in 40 years how those photos will look .I actually think they are really good, Regards
Thanks for watching. Yes I look forward to having all these photos to look back on in the future! ✌️
Nice work man
Thanks mate 🙏
Just stumbled on this video. Was a bit confused because I heard your accent then saw you were shooting near my brother in laws old neighborhood. Clicked on your channel and it turns out you live where I do in Colorado. Small world I guess!
Wow that’s crazy! Yeah the accent throws a lot of folks off.
I’d kill to have a “boring place” like this. Mine is full of nature in northern Alberta Canada but the city is so ugly everywhere it’s just awful for street photography
I feel you. Street photography is hard when there’s few people or the place is ugly. The further from big cities the harder it gets.
@@TheLiamGordon Seems like anywhere other than where I live is good for photography. As if you get so used to your environment that you can't see good photos in it.
What's town you live in?
Nice moody captures, what film simulation did you use?
Thank you! I was probably using classic chrome. But the images you see in the video were edited in Lightroom without a Fuji profile.
You walked on my street! The Wiss is a celebrity!
If you live near cook I walked on your street almost every day :)
One little trick in my very limited experience that I found is that you really shouldn't try and mix the crazy lighting conditions and incredible scenes with the boring stuff. I found a really neat little corner store that I took a picture of but I took the picture into the sun because it looked cool and it ended up kind of not really being good enough to be interesting when Dane stuff but also look like it was trying to hard and the lighting distracted too much from the actual subject. So I would say unless you really feel something to avoid doing both at the same time and pick one
I love your accent. Seriously.
Haha! Thanks.
These would look great on film
Thanks! I’m not a big fan of shooting film anymore unfortunately.
As I learned back when I, when living in Oxford, UK, kept moving houses now and then - keeping therefore my curiosity on its tiptoes - one photographer 's boring place is another one's playground.
You’ve hit the mail on the head there, Scott!
@@TheLiamGordon Thanks, mate! Glad to contribute to such a great subject.
Was trying to do this today and no sunshine.
Nice one of the paper cup.
Hope you put it in the bin/trash
Yeah When it's cloudy I rarely take the camera now.
I have 3 excuses... I was already juggling a leash, a camera and a bag of dog crap :p
@@TheLiamGordon you can tel your Scottish, the only person actually walking.
Where is everyone
😂😂😂 aye and traffic is mental once you get to the main road
I’m always getting strange looks from workmates and passersby as I often take photos of “strange” or what they think are boring things. Have some really nice shots I took in toilets, for example
I have a similar experience 😂 and funny you say that, I got an interesting photo in a toilet in Utah recently.
I was going to say i felt like I’ve been here before and then I saw the PA plates
These are not boring, great work I’m not saying it’s not, you want to see boring, go to a new development suburb in any city in America, they are so depressing
Jesus we take exactly the same types of photos in boring places. It’s like watching me shoot with a different accent.
Hahaha 😂 great minds shoot alike!
That place doesn't look boring. When I think boring I think everything is suburb where everything looks the same. Where nothing is interesting.
The point is that it’s not really boring. But when you walk the same streets for years it feels boring because you see the same things every day and it becomes harder to find anything new.
Deep in those suburbs is even harder but once in a while when the light is good or the seasons change something may come along.
I have no idea what I’d find in those suburbs but they are quite interesting As an example, there’s a great series by Todd Hido of suburban houses at night called House Hunting. Pretty boring subject matter but it’s very interesting.
I need to try taking my camera on my walks around the neighborhood instead of waiting for the nature park. Once I saw an entire pizza box on the sidewalk.
Yes! Try carrying it on your walks. A few months back I took a photo of my dog trying to get to a pizza box with half a pizza in it 😂 it’s little details like that that add up over time :)
where are u photographing?
Marco Butz he lives in Philadelphia if that helps.
Yeah, I’m in the northwest of Philadelphia
When I first saw your video , I was like "is this Jacksepticeye's brother??"
Not the first time I've heard that :)
I'm a pilot. I'm presented by gorgeous views all the time. But perpetually scratched and dirty windows and FAA/company rules kinda ruin that fun. Neighborhood walks it is!
Richard Sleeve oh man! That’s a bummer. I bet you could do a cool “pilot life” series as you go about airports and your downtime in random places though?
@@TheLiamGordon Now that I've finally upgraded from my D5000 to a D7200 and can shoot above ISO 200 without earth shattering noise, I definitely intend to. Well...once I'm flying again lol. Things are a little weird.
I do like your videos Liam, however, the first 6 minutes of this video should be named "How to shoot boring photos!" I think we've all gone through that process of taking photos for the sake of taking photos because you have a camera with you and you try to justify it in some way. What this video did for me was to look for the detail as oppose to shooting the bigger picture: the cup on the floor, the glass panels in the door. Thanks.
Jeff Sofroniou That’s a fair angle Jeff. I don’t personally find all the photos boring but I can see why that title would make sense, I do find the place pretty boring which is why that title sprung to mind :)
My problem is my neighborhood is all “cookicutter”. At least yours has variation.
That’s fair. It gets trickier in those places. Something I thought about recently is if you’re willing to do that wildly mundane work for a few years. New cars in new neighborhoods. In 40 years, that’s a body of work that very few people were shooting and it’ll be wildly interesting in the future. I love photos of brand new neighborhoods circa 1970.
nah these aren't TRUE boring places. there are a lot of things to shoot at there.
I want to see an empty corridor, with not much going on, and you have to take a photo of a regular person
That’s why boring is in quotation marks. The point is most places are not all that boring if you keep looking
Id rather save my shutter than take shit pictures of trash and photos with no real subject. I have a Sony and you never know what those things are going to shit The bed
Hey, whatever works for you. I’ve got years worth of shit pictures now