Basics: what's stopping you?

Do you sometimes feel like you just don't have any inspiration? Or how to create that powerful image? Or just have the simple question, where are the hotspots in town ?

Thank goodness for the net! 

So you're suffering from a lack of inspiration. Check out Flickr or 500px to see loads of great pictures that can inspire you. Let the colours and compositions draw you to new ideas. What also works for me is to just go to town. Any town'll do. Take a walk and look around you. With you head filled with inspirational ideas from checking out Flickr and 500px, you might just see your surroundings in a whole new light. 
It can also be a good idea to go out and shoot with a prime lens. Take just this one lens and go out to shoot an entire day. Forcing you to be creative, to find new ways to properly capture what you see. This video of Marc Wallace gives some more insight. 
And ofcourse, it's always a good idea to check out what other photographers are doing. Photographers you follow on social media are easy to check out. I'm a fan of the work (and workflow) of Serge Ramelli. It always works for me to check out his latest tutorials and publications to give my inspiration a boost. 

When going on the net, it happens to me quite regularly that I see a picture and wonder how did they do that? 
There's ofcourse several answers to that question. One way is to look on Youtube. If you want to know how for example digital blending works, just type in digital blending and you'll get a zillion hits. 
Guys like Serge Ramelli and Aaron Nace publish heaps of free tutorials. If you're really into their stuff, there's also great paid tutorials available. 

An other way is to look into the EXIF data of a picture. In the EXIF data you can find things like exposure, aperture and ISO (and a lot more). This can help you a lot to understand how to make a (simular) image. On Flickr you can see the EXIF data of a lot of pictures.

This EXIF data can help you when going out there to shoot yourself. 

So, now you've got the inspiration flowing, you know how to create that really cool image and you're off to a city. What is the best spot in town to make your great images? 

A very good site with a lot of high quality images is 500px. Let's say you're off to Amsterdam and you have no clue about the hotspots.

Other way is to visit the map of 500px. Just find your town and zoom in and you get images and their location.

So don't let anything stop you to pick up your camera and shoot. Have fun out there, go shoot some great pictures! 

Follow us on Facebook or 500px.