If you haven’t seen The Five Obstructions, go see it. It’s an amazing testament to the power of creativity and what people can accomplish under severe limitations. In it, a director is challenged to recreate a short film five times, each time with a set of very specific conditions. The solutions are genius.
People don’t need much to flourish, but the more you have, the more you rely on having more. It’s natural to take the path of least resistance, both physically and mentally. But a problem solved is a problem done, and that means a lot of people never revisit their original decisions. They just build on them, layer after layer, until it forms an ecosystem of habits and reflexes that, for better or worse, guide you almost instinctively.
If you want to get better, limit yourself. Create restrictions in what you can shoot or shoot with. It forces you to come up with new solutions and to confront things differently than you have in the past. It also challenges you to revisit earlier tactics and come up with alternatives. Most importantly, it keeps you off balance and, in doing so, lets you see differently. What if you could only use direct flash? What if nothing could be in focus? What if everything had to be white? What about the distances you stand from the subject? And, of course, there’s the old standbys. Trying new focal lengths or working differently with light.
Play with limitations and keep stretching your problem solving skills until they can’t snap back. Find the smallest thing necessary to make a picture work in the severest of conditions. It’s the surest way to break the stereotypes of your past and find out who you are in the present.
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