One of the traps that I fall into with photography is to wait until I have some grand, artistic idea before I start shooting. And, to be honest, I rarely have the inspiration to create a set of specific images at the moment. So I will just pick a subject on a whim and then work with that. You don’t need inspiration … just a random imagination and a ‘have a go’ mindset.
I’m getting some decking laid at the back of my house. I spent an intense thirty minutes stacking the long pieces of wood which I laid at right-angles to the structure underneath. The texture of the wood was interesting and the long plank lengths (along with the repeating patterns of the supports below) really suggested wide angled views and a shallow depth of field.
I didn’t pull the focal length back to a full wide angle (I was using an 18-55mm zoom lens on my mirrorless camera) as I wanted to have the shallow depth of field effect. So I settled at 29mm and an aperture of f/3.5 and then I concentrated on composition and interesting viewpoints.
I’ll agree that it isn’t fine art on a grand scale but I enjoyed making the images. More importantly, it got me out and using my camera. They might not mean anything in particular but, to me, the creation of these images was both thought-provoking and reflective.