Photographic Creative Eye - Tips for DevelopingYou can develop your creative eye by following a few exercises that will help you find photographic subjects. You have likely heard the expression, "He has a good eye." This creative ability is otherwise known as the art of seeing. I’ll suggest a few ideas for you to work on here. Finding Letters or Shapes in the Field These exercises are what I call self assignments. One exercise is to go into the field, spelled city or country here, collectively anywhere, and try to find letters of the alphabet within the designs of nature or manmade structures. I don’t mean the actual letters you might find like the “S” in a stop sign, but rather in the abstract sense. I illustrate what I mean by abstract in the following photos. You can choose to find them anywhere in a variety of places. I chose to isolate my letters entirely to parts of automobiles. There was a Corvette auto show in town at the time so I also chose to make all my alphabet letter photos from Corvette bodies. My "good eye" succeeded in finding and photographing all 26 letters of the alphabet within Corvette bodies or under hood parts in about three hours of scouting. If you have a particular hobby that you like then this "eye" exercise may make finding letters related to objects within your hobby more enjoyable. I found the letters within the designs, but due to the smaller nature of my particular subjects sometimes I photographed the larger section of car body that contained my letter and did cropping in the computer later. That saved me from having to deal with macro and depth of field issues, otherwise the exercise would have taken much longer to get all the letters in good focus. I actually found each letter in more than one place and took shots of all my findings. 
The letter “P” here was found in a side view mirror. I also found the letter P in door handles and panels. The letter “E” in the next photo is actually from the hood of a Corvette. I also isolated “E’s” in a luggage rack and grill.
The “Q” came from a gas tank cap. A “Q” was also found in an under the hood shot of a breather where the air filter is contained.
The letter “S” you see is a bit more abstract than the others. It is actually a reflection off the blue Corvette body.
Try this same eye/letter exercise only confine yourself to nature. Perhaps try to find the letters in leaves, other foliage or flowers. Look on both the grand and small scale. Perhaps find the patterns in animal skins and hides. I have seen one photographer do this “letter” exercise by isolating parts of the design on wings of butterflies. Photographing a Specific Color Now, try a similar exercise by photographing the color red or other color of your choosing. Find the color and varying shades of it in nature or manmade structures. See how many places you can find it and how many ways you can illustrate it, whether it is the side of a building or a red sky. Try to be artful in your display of the color as well. In other words, if you see a red truck you can photograph that, but don’t stop there. See how many ways you can photograph the color red on the truck by isolating sections of the truck. See my article entitled "
Tips to Boost Creativity and Other Basic Photographic Tips
". Shoot with different lenses and try different perspectives. Notice the reflection off the bumper where you can see your red shirt you wore the day of the shoot…capture that too. Photographing an Object Next, select an object to photograph. Observe the object and see how many different ways you can “show” the object. A few suggestions would be: an apple, coffee cup, shoe, egg, pool ball, or a head of lettuce. For instance, if you selected an apple you could shoot its reflective surface, cut it in half to show the inside, or even cut those halves in half and so forth to form a geometric pattern. Just don’t go too far with slicing the apple in halves or you will wind up with applesauce. If you decided on a shoe…photograph it from the top, bottom, side, from the inside looking out(not impossible with a camera, but a bit more work than the other angles). The idea is to observe and see the possibilities. Shoot a shoe pair with and without feet in them…women’s feet or men’s feet, etc. Take the shoe assignment a step further and shoot anything having to do with shoes. For example, shoe tracks in the mud, snowshoes and tracks, bronze shoes, old shoes, new shoes, etc. The idea is to be artful and creative in the process. Tracks in the mud can show pattern or be leading lines to some other subject and bronze shoes can be reflective. Experiment! How about the egg? A few suggestions…set it next to a chicken or break it open and make a self portrait from your reflection in the yolk. Viola, you're an egghead! These eye exercises should get those creative wheels turning in your gray matter. Now that I have got the ball rolling come up with some of your own exercises. You are sure to improve your ability to “see”. The next time you are in the field shooting the Real McCoy I think you will notice the difference in your way of looking at things. Practice! authored by Lon Britton
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