Ideas, Ideas, Ideas… Find Out What Your Kit Can Do.

Google can help you find ideas for trying out with your camera

Google can help you find ideas for trying out with your camera. Some results from the Google Images page for "Canon+5d+mkII+sample+images"
Click to see the same search on Google.

Most of the time it’s ideas we need

Sometimes getting new kit is a crusade. Must have this, must have that… buy, buy, buy! When I ask my students and friends why they feel like this the answer is simple. Often photographers feel that the kit they already have is somehow inadequate. Actually, even among my professional photographer friends, I find that most photographers have not fully explored their existing kit. After a little probing it turns out there are a lot of things they have never tried out. It is not kit that is the problem, it is a shortage of ideas. They really need to look for new challenges and to explore ideas.

Here is a quick and simple way to get ideas. Use Google. The search engine has a great ‘image search’ facility. You can put in details of your camera or your lens and see what sort of images other people have taken. I put this search term into the Google images search box… Canon+5d+mkII+sample+images. The + symbol tells Google you want all the words used. What I got back was “About 708,000 results” of images taken by that model. Wow! Now I have some new ideas!

Spend some time looking through those images. I am sure you will have lots of ideas. All of that is possible with your camera or lens or whatever you Googled.

Spend the next year trying to produce images like those on your Google page. If you can improve the quality and extend the ideas you will be developing your skills well. And, you will have a lot of fun.

By Damon Guy (author and Photokonnexion editor)

Damon Guy - Netkonnexion

Damon Guy (Netkonnexion)

Damon is a writer-photog and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photographers.
See also: Editors ‘Bio’.

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