What do you do when you have that take a picture itch?

[americanswan]

I have my camera here with me. I REALLY want to take a picture right now, but I

have nothing to take a picture of. I am in my office at an elementary school.

Yeah, not exactly a photographers dream. And I have a Diana.

 

Advice?

[lex_photo]

Make a design with pencils, pens, markers, crayons what ever and take a photo of

that. You could use some construction paper to make a stop motion video, or just use

the crayons. I hope this helps - Lex

[graybrick]

At times I think I need to be more creative, and notice the environment I am in. Then again, I've wasted a lot of film shooting nothing. You could always set up a self portrait, or take pictures of pencils, your trash basket, papers... or you could wait and wait for the perfect shot to present itself. If you want to take a picture that bad, you'll find something to shoot.

[mharris]

Go buy some tomatoes and little plastic army men. Title the shot, "The War on Tomatoes".

[americanswan]

Harris. Funny Idea.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

[mharris]

I figured with all the tomato scares going around maybe a reprise of the Attack of the Killer Tomato thing. Photoshop, little spacemen, and you have Tomatolians.

[Matt Laur]

Try something difficult. Backlight some some smoke from a just-blown-out candle, and try to balance the exposure to show the smoke without blowing hightlights.

 

Set up four chairs in a line going away from you across the room, mentally pick an exposure, think about which chair you're going to focus on, and then (based on your focal length and aperture choice) see if you can guess excatly how the depth of field is going to work. Work on your chops when you don't have some creative vision jumping out at you.

[americanswan]

Laur, That's a GREAT idea.

[chris_waller]

What do you want to take a picture of? Why? What do you want to say about it? And how will you say it?

[pjmeade]

Try some moody documentary shots about your office.

 

But I love the war on tomatoes idea. I may try that myself.

[jim_momary]

Make a Lego camera and take a photo of it. I have the same trouble in my 'office', the attendants took away all my sharp and pointy objects. (If you use APS-C sized mini-Legos, is the DOF changed by the crop factor?) (Do the giant Legos qualify as medium format?) ... Jim 'straightjacket' M.

[SCL]

Use a self timer and take a self portrait of yourself looking mildly

disinterested/bored. After you view the picture a couple of times you'll get

sick & tired of seeing yourself looking uninspired, and probably resolve to not

let it happen again.

[hjoseph7]

Pretend that you are getting paid to take a picture, any picture, no excuses !

[abzphotoz]

You should try having some fun...when I get bored and want to shoot but I don't seem to have a subject I turn off the lights, grab a flashlight, put the camera on self timer, adjust the shutter speed to 5 or 10 or 15 seconds, dance around like a total freak while twirling the flashlight as well as making some strange facial expressions. The results will make you laugh. Or you could set up mini scenes or just take pictures of close up water droplets... or how about some cool shavings from a pencil sharpener.

[americanswan]

I want to try that smoke look sometime.

 

I took a few pictures of a small scene next to my office toward the window. The light coming in. I took the photos with counting different shutter times to see what differences it made. I have a setup where I can take pictures of that line of chairs with the depth of field issues. Haven't taken a picture of it yet.