A Wave of Inspiration!

It's amazing how a season change can suddenly inspire you. I have been in the biggest creative slump over the past few weeks. If you are a fellow creative, then I am sure you can imagine the frustration I have been feeling. However, over the past few days I have had a sudden wave of inspiration. I want to take photos of everything and I want to write stuff that nobody else cares about so here I am doing exactly that!

I have a good eye and normally it doesn't take me very long to decide what it is I want to photograph and how I am going to photograph it. It's like a sixth sense. But none of that matters when you're in a creative slump. No matter what, you just find it hard to be productive and when you push yourself, what you produce may not be your best work and then the frustration continues. The main thing you've got to do is find inspiration, and believe me ANYTHING can inspire you;

- Songs

- Books

- Magazines

- Social Media

- Going for walks

You name it. It's not hard to get inspired. For me, a change of season can put a different perspective on how you see things. Spring has come, the sun is out, the flowers are in bloom and my sixth sense returned and I was ready to capture the season. To follow are some pictures that I have taken over that past week or so. As they were over several days, I want to talk about the final product and what inspired me to take the photograph rather than go in to the technicalities of how I captured the image. However, most of the images were taken on the aperture setting with the f/stop set between f/4-f/8 and an ISO of 100 as we have been having some lovely weather and the lighting has been perfect. (If you were curious on the camera that I used then it was with my trusty Canon EOS 100D with a 75-300mm lens for the wildlife images and 18-55mm lens for anything else that isn't birds!)

When I think of Spring I think of nature, wildlife and the colours that come with that. I started with the wildlife by taking pictures of some beautiful birds:

I would say that this was my favourite image from that day. This bird was absolutely gorgeous and I loved the way the colours of its feathers blend with the background. It took me a while to get the bird to look the way I wanted it to. Of course, you can't tell an animal how you want them to pose like you do with a human so the key here is patience. (You might be waiting a while and you might have to take several bad images to get the one good one but it will be worth it).

I also really liked how this image was framed. It is quite rare for me to take an image with the subject in the centre of the frame. Sometimes if it works and looks good then sure there's no problem with that. In fact if you carry on scrolling I have done exactly that because my instinct told me that with that particular image it worked. Just remember that the rule of thirds always apply even when you think you're not using it. I love the fact that the subject in this photograph is slightly off centre and you have a grey space next to it. It shows the bird in its natural habitat (which it was) rather than looking like you have positioned it.

Here are some more images I took that day:

So it's not just the wildlife that I associate with Spring. In fact, the very first thing that I think about when it comes to Spring is the lighter nights, the sunny weather and in my opinion the most important of all, all the flowers are in bloom. I LOVE taking pictures of flowers. You can just walk out of your front door and find them ANYWHERE. My favourite type of flower you may ask? Cherry blossom. They are the symbolic flower of Spring and signify a time of renewal and the fleeting of nature. I can't get enough of them and they are beautiful flowers to photograph. Cherry blossom trees don't last all that long before the blossom starts to fall so you have got to capture them whilst they are at their finest:

There is a stunning cherry blossom tree right outside my house and I wanted to capture it at different stages. The first stage was before the blossoms started to fall and the tree was still filled with gorgeous pink flowers. I wanted to capture the detail of all the flowers so I chose to zoom in on the branches rather than take a picture of the whole tree. (Plus this tree is right next to a main road and that kind of ruined its beauty so wanted to leave that out!). This was taken on a very sunny day with no clouds in the sky and I love the contrast between the deep blue sky and the brightness of the pink on the blossoms.

It didn't take long for all the blossoms to fall and we were greeted with a sea of pink outside our window. I really wanted to photograph the before and after of the blossoms and this was the outcome. The first image you see here was a close up of the petals on the grass. It was raining slightly when I took these and if you look closely you can see rain droplets on some of the petals and I really liked that detail as it gives the image more character. Whilst I was taking this picture, a full blossom flower fell from the tree right in front of me. I placed it amongst the petals and used that as my main subject and that was how I got the second image. The third photograph here was taken with a different technique. I wanted a full image of the petals that had fallen but I wanted to get as much detail as possible. I used the HDR technique which was able to successfully capture the detail of every petal that was on the floor.

So this was the outcome of when I suddenly felt a wave of inspiration. With the seasons changing, it can give a different perspective on how you see everyday things and that was enough for me to escape my creative slump. Below are some images that I have taken here and there which I still really enjoyed doing. If you want to see more then feel free to go have a little look at my Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/em__media/

I'm going to be doing a little bit of travelling across the country over the next few weeks and I am hoping that I will find the time to photographically document it so keep an eye out for that! In the meantime check out a few more of my recent images: