CRYSTAL JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY, LLC
ORLANDO, FLORIDA

Over the past 26 years I have grown to appreciate both the art and science of photography. I love to read about photography and attend seminars. This continual acquisition of knowledge has helped me grow as a photographer. I have a degree in Industrial Engineer so my solution to every problem is to do a ton of research . I started out by reading a lot of articles about breaking slumps. Lets just say things got a bit repetitive and I am not sure yet how much it will help me. Here are the top 12 themes I saw in all the articles that I read – so this is nothing new. I have lists of places I went to visit/re-visit (both local and further away) – maybe making myself get out and shoot will help me get back in the zone. Some of my struggle is how many pictures do I need of things? This waterfall is about 40 minutes from my house, but with the angle of the canyon walls there is about one place to shoot it from, after getting a good image throughout multiple seasons, I am good – I don’t need to go back. A girl only needs so many waterfall pictures. Basically you make a list of concepts, locations, words, theme and anything else that will inspire you. I am a list maker – I use One Note to make my lists since it is on my computer, phone and iPad, so I can add to the list anytime and everything sinks. I just need to make myself actually photograph some of my ideas, so the act of making a list isn’t going to break my slump. Action item is to prioritize my list and pick something from it to actually work on. I am my own worst critic – I look back at older work I thought was good and now I am like – what was I thinking? I go through my Flickr pretty regularly and clean it up and try to keep the image count down and get rid of the images I don’t like anymore. This hard look at myself help moving forward, since I think about what I like/don’t like about each image. Since 2010 I have 2,595 and am due for another clean up to par that down to about 2000 images which is what I try and keep it at. I belong to a local camera club which hosts competitions where the judges critique all of the entries, so I have had a lot of critiques by people who don’t know me and this has helped me grow. This isn’t going to break my slump…but I highly recommend quality critiques, it has help me grow as a photographer. I am currently president of our local camera club and superintendent of the photography department of our local fair. I have a lot of photography friends. If you don’t hang out with other photographs – do it. I think this has defiantly helped me grow as a photographers. I will say the more I have gotten involved the less I photograph, a lot of my energy has been spent on the administrative vs create side of belongings to a club. Be involved in art as a whole, such as painting, music, dance, drawing, and writing to get inspiration. I love music and am a reader. Not sure this is going to help me. Basically this advice is to take a break from photography and do something else. I got this one down – I belong to a book club and a running group. I am actually training for a half marathon in April and another half and a Ragnar relay in May. This gives me plenty of non-photography time. I do know people who are photograph all the time, they could benefit from this one. I will say since I started running a couple years ago I do spend less time on photography, but I am a lot healthier and when traveling it is a lot easier to do the hikes since I am in better shape. I really enjoy the mental brake that running provides.