If you’re feeling in a rut with your photography, or you just don’t feel inspired to pick up your camera, then this is for you!

I’m sharing with you a quick, 30 minute photography challenge you can do that will help you break out of your photography rut, PLUS I’m going to give you some prompts for inspiration whilst doing it!

Like most photographers, I go through peaks and valleys with photography - there are times when I feel inspired by pretty much everything around me, and I want to pick up my camera all the time, and I’m enjoying experimenting and taking different photos.

Then there are times when the opposite happens. When I don’t feel inspired or motivated.

This is when I either don’t pick up my camera at all, or i pick it up more out of habit than desire, and it feels like an effort to take a photo. And when I get like this, I tend not to love the results, which totally makes sense when you think about it - when you become detached from the process of taking photos, it’s unsurprising that your photos look detached and boring.

And its a vicious cycle - when you don’t want to pick up your camera, you stop photographing, and then when you try to pick it up again you still feel detached and bored, and the photos aren’t coming out the way you wanted them to, so feel even more demoralized and therefore even less likely to want to pick up your camera.

I know that I am not alone in this!

I hear from other photographers all the time who tell me they feel in a rut, or they’re bored, or they’ve run out of things to photograph. This is true of both hobbyists and professional photographers alike, and it can happen to you at whatever stage of your photography journey you are at - from new photographers to experienced professionals.

What to do when you feel in a creative slump

If you’ve been a follower of Live Snap Love for a while, you’ll know that I always recommend firstly taking a little time away from your camera, just to get a bit of a break, and then coming back by setting yourself a challenge.

I have a couple of go-to challenges that I do for this, and one of them is the one I’m going to share with you today, which I call the 30 in 30 challenge.

I love it because it’s quick, you can do it anywhere and it’s super simple. So if you’ve been feeling in a creative slump, I’m going to challenge you to give it a go!

(All the photos in this post were taken during a single 30 in 30 challenge that I did a little while back, just to give you an idea!)

For this 30 in 30 Challenge, you are going to place some limitations on what you can shoot, and that’s because, believe or not, limitations HELP your creativity.

Instead of being able to shoot anywhere and shoot anything, we are going to limit ourselves to shooting in ONE location and ONLY for 30 minutes.

Here’s what do for you 30 in 30 challenge:

Step 1: Choose a Location for Your Challenge

First choose a location for your photos, preferably outdoors, although there’s no reason you couldn’t do this indoors, it might just be a little more challenging.

It doesn’t need to be somewhere exotic or even incredibly interesting - in fact, the simpler the better. Some examples would be your back garden, a small area in your local park, your driveway, an area of the beach or even a small side street.

If shooting indoors, stick to one room in your house.

You don’t want too wide an area to cover, remember that the goal is to limit your options of where you can photograph in order to force you to see all the possibilities in one location.

Your location also doesn’t need to be somewhere new, in fact it will be more of a challenge if you are in a location that you shoot in quite often!

So the first “rule” of the 30 in 30 challenge is that you want to stay in that one location (or one small part of that location if it is somewhere big like a long stretch of beach!) for ALL 30 photos.

For example, all these images were taken in small stretch of my local beach.

Step 2: Set a Timer for 30 Minutes

Once you have your location sorted, the next step is to set a timer for 30 minutes. Again, we are limiting ourselves and giving ourselves a specific time limit. Now, I don’t care if you end up going over the 30 minute limit, and I’m sure you don’t either, but try to stick it out for at least 30 minutes, and be finished in that time. If you want, you could spend a bit of time scouting out the location and having a bit of a think before you start the timer.

Then start shooting! With a 30 minute window you need to take a photo every minute. I know, it’s tricky! But we are going to make it a little bit more challenging, by making sure that each of the 30 photographs is unique and different from the others.

So to recap, the three “rules” are one location, for 30 minutes, with 30 unique photographs.

Some points to note….

Although each photograph needs to be unique, each one does not need to be of a different subject. So for example if you are at the park and you see some pretty flowers, you could take a photograph of one single flower from above, to a group of flowers, before lying down on the ground and shooting them below, or photographing along the whole length of the flower bed.

Plus, you are not aiming to get the 30 most out of this world, wall worthy, shareable images you have ever taken. The goal is simply get your brain thinking creatively again, to start seeing the possibilities that are always around you, and to encourage you to try something new or that you haven’t done for a while.

What to do if you still feel uninspired!

Now, I know that you will probably start off standing there with your camera in your hand feeling uninspired, or taking the obvious ones first and then feeling yourself run try.

So I have a couple of prompts to get you going:

Try shooting from many different angles, lie down on your tummy or stand on something and look down or get at eye level.
Try using a different f-stop and try a photo with a really wide depth of field, and another of the same thing but this time with an extremely shallow depth of field
If there are moving objects in the scene, you can first use your shutter speed to freeze them, and then another, this time showing the motion through motion blur.
For inanimate objects, you can look for interesting lines , patterns, textures, shapes or color combinations.
Try using different composition tools such as the rule of thirds, the golden compositions or framing.
Light your subject in a different way - try lighting it from the front, then the back, then the side.
Move closer and further away from an object - firstly capture just a small detail or element of it, then stand back and capture the whole scene with the object it in.

I hope you can see that although you are limiting yourself in terms of time and location, the possibilities are endless!

Please let me know how you get on in the comments below, or over on social media - you’ll find me as @livesnaplove on both Facebook and Instagram, and I always love to hear from you!

Plus if you want even MORE ideas for creative challenges, be sure to download the DOWNLOAD THE FREE CREATIVE EXERCISES & CHALLENGES GUIDE!