Photography advice from Annabel Williams

Creative people need constant inspiration and motivation.  If you keep doing the same thing, you will get bored and in a rut.  Don't be afraid to say yes to something you think you can't do!  Just say yes for fun - that will motivate you to work out how to do it.

If someone phones me with an interesting idea which I haven't the first clue how to do, I will say yes, because this keeps me fired up and gives me a new challenge.  It motivates me to learn how to do something different.  I will always try to do it in a different way.  There is no point in me competing with say a top landscape photographer or a top architectural photographer, when I am primarily a people photographer - I just need to look at the project in a different way and do it in my own style; having suggested alternative ways of doing it to the client first.  If they are up for something different then we can do it - if they want it done in a specific, traditional way and I can't change their mind, then I would turn down the job.  It wouldn't motivate me to copy someone else's work, so there would be no point.

I was asked to do some shots of buildings for a client a few years ago, which really inspired me, because their buildings were so fabulous.  They had always been shot by architectural photographers who showed them from the outside, with straight lines and in perfect architectural form.  I would not have been able to do this, because I am just not a technical photographer - and there would have been no point, because they already had those photos, so I looked at the job from a different perspective.  I wanted to show people how it would feel to work in those buildings; to show the little details that the designers had included - like the shapes of the taps, the light in the lifts - the way the sunshine came through the windows and made patterns on the floor of the lobby.  It was hugely inspiring and creative, and resulted in shots which the client loved.

"Not everything has to be beautiful to be photographed." Photograph by Annabel Williams.

If you are given a brief to shoot which you think is boring, but it's exactly what the client wants - do it, provided you have the opportunity to do more - take shots for yourself once you've taken the ones for the client - you will be amazed how many times the client loves yours too - and this will motivate and inspire you to take things one step further each time you shoot.

Not everything has to be beautiful to be photographed. You can create the most amazing pictures from the worst of subjects; old metal dustbins, peeling rust and paint. Everything is beautiful if you look at it in a different way.  Just take time out to look at things differently and study things with new eyes.

Decide you can work with anything, whatever the background and whatever the weather - and just make it happen.

Visit Annabel Williams' website for more information.

Missed the previous articles? Take a look now:

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