Boredom plays an undervalued role in stimulating your creativity and improving your photography.
On Saturday my wife had an exhibition opening. We all went there early as she had to setup food, etc. There wasn’t anything for my daughter and I to do and no one had really showed up yet so, given that we were already tired, Lauren and I became bored. So we decided to go for a walk and then come back when people had started turning up.
Since I had my camera with me to photograph the exhibition I naturally started thinking what to shoot while my daughter and I walked. Since the light levels were falling (it seems to be into winter here early) Some possibilities dropped away. So I decided to play with blur. The important thing there is the word play. I had no expectations about result, was just filling time and using it to teach my daughter a part of photography she hadn’t played with yet. We sat down in a cafe and had a hot chocolate and I started shooting. My daughter shot some blur. I explained what was going on. Then we slowly wandered back to the gallery shooting blur on the way. Here are some of the images I took.
The important thing is that boredom led to no expectations and a willingness to just play with the camera. This is really important and we all need to do this more often.
