Photographing at Home

  Most people tend to do most of their photography when on a workshop, meetup, tour, or on vacation. The problem with this is that between those times, there is almost no shooting.  The camera is put away until the next adventure; this leaves you at a disadvantage dealing with composition and creativity. To improve your eye, it is important to photograph consistently and in order to do this, it is necessary to shoot near home or even in your home.
   And it is important to know your camera well; this can come in very handy at night or when your flashlight fails. If you are struggling with your camera settings, how can you be creative? If you have custom functions, learn to use them. I am primarily a landscape photographer and have three custom functions set up for this genre.  If I am under pressure to shoot as the light is changing rapidly, these are my fall back settings:  they can be manipulated if necessary.
   A lot of you are saying,"It is boring where I live; there is nothing to shoot.". This is when you have to be creative and dig deep into your  brain for ideas. The images I have attached were all taken in or near my house.

This is a light bulb in a dark corner of my cellar...I flipped the image vertically.

The next image is a bunch of leaves on a thistle plant that I happened to pass on a walk with my dog.

The next image is a bunch of trees in the woods...nothing special about them, so I used a slow shutter speed and moved the camera vertically to get something interesting.

The final image is a coil of rope..that's it...it was at a boatyard lying on the ground. I picked it up and changed the shape of the coil so it had more of a vortex feel.

As you see, there is no great image here, but there is a learning opportunity.  They are all decent images that gave me an opportunity to work with composition and creativity. And even with color.

Maybe you have to force yourself to do it initially, but the exercise is well worth the effort.