Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I have recently been in a bit of a rut lately but i think ive gotten out of it be changing how i see things and how i shoot in the street. With every roll and try and shake things up and try different things while at the same time maintaining the mentality of taking good, quality photographs. Whats your guys thought about this? Do you think its good to maintain a discernible style or should you always strive to be unique whenever you shoot?

Having photographed for several decades now (since I was a child), I have never gotten in a rut by always experimenting with what the camera can do, and always trying something new.

As a catalog photographer it gets boring very quickly having to photograph items with a strict formula, with very few chances to go wild. As such for my personal photography I tend to do wild things, like light painting, and looking for new things like smoke and splash photography.

I also tend to spend more on new equipment, like my high-speed light/sound trigger, extreme lenses (like fisheye and tilt/shift), and optical filters, and this year I got a camera that shows the photo developing during a bulb exposure (Olympus E-M5) instead of just having a black screen.

Lastly I look for magazines, books, videos, and websites that expand my creativity or teach a technique that's new for me. Sites for example like http://www.1x.com