Experimental Photography
Digital photography is an experimenter's dream. If you flub a picture, you can just delete it and it has cost you nothing. The quick display of the LCD monitor allows the photographer to quickly judge how to modify his settings. Experimentation by its very nature requires constant feedback, which is exactly what digital photography provides.
Experimentation is a learning process in which each picture leads to the next. The photographer learns to make adjustments as he goes along based on the last picture. A photographer will make lots of mistakes, but will slowly zero in on a new and exciting effect, which, once mastered, can be used over and over.
In the old days of film, experimenting was costly and there was a huge time lag between taking the picture and seeing the results. This made the process very cumbersome and slow. What can now be accomplished in a matter of hours with digital photography often took weeks with traditional film.
In a sense, experimenting encourages and allows you to take pictures that are wrong. Experimental pictures are often ones that you would normally avoid. Use blur, camera shake, and noise, for example, for artistic effect. Use odd color balance to achieve an unusual look. Unusual camera angles and framing can also be productive.
Some fruitful areas for experimentation are:
Slow shutter speeds: Using a slower than normal shutter speed can produce quite unusual images that have a smeared effect.
The “wrong” white balance: You can get very colorful results using an inappropriate color balance.
Flare: When light enters the lens directly, it often does odd things. The effect will be different depending on the aperture. For example, a backlit portrait in which some of the backlighting is allowed to flare might produce interesting results.
Night photography: Everything is different at night. The colors, contrast, shadows, and light sources are all different. There is lots of room for experimentation.
Self-portraits: Digital photography allows you to judge immediately how you look. Some cameras even have an LCD that swivels so you can easily take pictures of yourself.
Very slow shutter speeds: Experiment with minute-long exposures at night.
A high ISO: High ISO settings will produce a lot of noise, but noise might be colorful in some situations.
Mixed lighting: Very colorful effects can be found and produced by using a variety of light sources or setting the camera's white balance to the wrong setting.
Underexposure: Severely underexposed pictures can produce unexpected and dramatic results when lightened and color-corrected in a digital darkroom.
Camera shake: Shaking a camera as you take a picture might create unusual patterns.
Camera movement: Panning the camera, walking with a camera down a street with a slow shutter speed can produce exciting effects.
Slow-sync flash: The razor-sharp speed of flash can be mixed with the very slow exposure of slow-sync flash for quite surprising results.
Odd camera angles: Shoot from the floor or from a stepladder. What does your apartment look like?
Odd framing: Frame so you see only part of a person's face or part of a person walking out of the frame. How does the framing feel?
There are no limits: Experiment with all the ways that light can register on light-sensitive material. Some people have even thrown their cameras into the air while taking a shot, just to see what would happen.
