One of the blogs I was reading awhile ago and I can’t remember the name right now, mentioned about a way to improve your creativity by taking on obscure topics like “weather” or “emotions” This may sound simple to some “just take a shot of someone crying” or “Shoot a rain storm… easy” However, take it a step further.

How do you convey “rain” how does it make you feel? Is it cold? sad? romantic? With emotions you can do the same thing. When some one is angry how do you feel? What do you do when you are sad?

The whole idea of this is to tell a story and get away from the “I was there” or “I ate this” type of photography,  especially when you are in Korea. By telling a story with your photos it will convey more than just a brief “huh… that is a strange food…” This also doesn’t mean that you have to become an artistic douche either, just take a few moments to think about what you are trying  to say.

A good example of this is from the weekend. I went to Busan with my Girlfriend and we’ve been doing that quite a bit since we have a car. We went up to the top of Hwangyeongsan to catch a view of the surrounding area. Immediately I started snapping. My brain just said well, you are here… take pictures! Then I stopped and I thought more about what I wanted to get and what the views meant to me.

Vast and wide were the words that came to mind, so I got to work on some panoramas of the area. The jewel of the site was the view of Gwangali Bridge. SO I set out to work on that. I wanted to create an isolated view of it because it just stuck out so much.

So with the rainy season upon us and our plans most likely being stuck around home figuring out Google+ or drinking coffee at the local shop, figure out away to use the down time to make a story. Show the frustration of the rainy season in Korea. Show the humidity, the boredom, whatever!  The trick is to find something about the scene that can convey the feel more than just the obvious. I am still working on this one myself so the photos that I post are not really what I am talking about but I hope that you get the idea.

Let me know how your photos turn out and I will post a link here if you’d like.