drive (walk? bike?) to the countryside and try some landscapes!  Thats what i do (almost the only thing i do)

I have the opposite problem.  Notebooks filled with ideas, and absolutely NO desire not enough time to shoot them. 

Ditto apart from my amendment.

I almost always have a ton of images that I've shot but never had time to process. I go and find those if I don't have anything lined up to shoot. Another thing is find something new to learn in Photoshop, Illustrator, camera technique if I already have the gear, and work through some tutorials. Very often some inspiration comes from that - as long as you let yourself just learn, vs. obsess about thinking of a stock image you can make with it.

For lifestyle work, even without models there are useful shots of settings that you might fill out your other work with - particularly if you use the same props and sets as a model session used.

drive (walk? bike?) to the countryside and try some landscapes!  Thats what i do (almost the only thing i do)

That's a great idea if you do landscapes. I don't, I've never really tried it, because it never interested me (I'm not sure I looked at, or better said enlarged more than a few dozens landscape thumbs out of tens of thousands of images that I saw in the last ten years or so). I always liked shooting ppl or animals, something alive, something to catch the mood, emotions etc. I shoot ppl exclusively. I did try some simple still life, but got so bored in 10 minutes, plus nothing really sold, so I gave that up completely. Landscapes have to be really awesome to earn some decent money in MS. Like yours obviously are.

Quote from: wut on February 23, 2012, 17:28

So what do you do when you get in such a situation? I'm really getting restless I was used to shooting, postprocessing and ULing every single day for almost a month and a half up until 10 days ago.

I have the opposite problem.  Notebooks filled with ideas, and absolutely NO desire to shoot them.  The epidemic of dropping royalties should maybe motivate me to work harder, but it has had the opposite effect. 

But to your original question, I keep a notebook by my bed, and one by my desk. Whenever an idea hits (amazing how often it happens when I am either going to sleep or just waking up) I write it in the notebook. 

Of course the traditional route in micro is to go look at best sellers, but that's a waste of time IMO.  Who wants to add yet another image to an already saturated topic?  No real money in that unless you are a factory and can make tens of thousands of pics per year. 

Indeed, stunts like 123RF just pulled get me demotivated. Not to not shoot, but to not have anything to do with them anymore. I still am motivated because of sites like SS. But I can understand where you're coming from, you are in this game since the very beginning. I'm at it only for a couple of years and I really got fed up back in November after a bad shoot.

I have a notebook as well. Not besides my bed although I did get up once and write the ideas down. The other problem for me is to get good male models, hell to even get male models. I can get dozens of girls to model for me, every beautiful young woman wants to get photographed. But with men it's completely different, they don't like to model as much (even if they like like Brad Pitt, Ricky Martin, Johnny Depp, David Beckham etc) and are much more pragmatic, it really is a "show me the money thing" (and usually they expect a lot more than women - funny isn't it? ). Micro really is a balance between expenses and income, income is micro, so the expenses have to be as well.

You're right, but I do that as well from time to time, not only best seller but I look at ports of togs I like or have a similar style of shooting than I have. It's not about copying, just what to shoot, to get a rough idea, I do it totally differently then anyway. If you can do it better than them or incorporate someting more trendy/modern into the shot (tablet instead of laptop etc) than you can just make enough money off of it, although it's been done a thousand times.

I almost always have a ton of images that I've shot but never had time to process. I go and find those if I don't have anything lined up to shoot. Another thing is find something new to learn in Photoshop, Illustrator, camera technique if I already have the gear, and work through some tutorials. Very often some inspiration comes from that - as long as you let yourself just learn, vs. obsess about thinking of a stock image you can make with it.

For lifestyle work, even without models there are useful shots of settings that you might fill out your other work with - particularly if you use the same props and sets as a model session used.

It never really happens to me, since I usually shoot just once or twice a month (I haven't had a shoot this month yet). But I'd like to have hundreds of images waiting for PPing. And that's the reason I'd like to shoot more, but forcing yourself too much, at least in my case, brings down creativity and originality and you can get fed up, especially if you do a lot of generic stuff. Yes, that's exactly what I've been doing for a week, obsessing

Nah, I can't do that. I get bored in a second. I need models. I can only make good stuff with models. I love interacting with models, just getting step by step to the image I invisioned in my head. I like to bring out emotions out of them, like to get them exactly where I want them to be, to make the shot really look authentic, conveying the message/concept etc. Of course I do a lot of cheesy smiles after that, that still sells best. Why? It beats me, it's so unnatural.

Even not shooting "People, Business & Lifestyle", when I ran out of inspiration:

- Drive like a crazy everywhere. More than once on same place. Then I leave car somewhere.. and walk.
- Go shoot birds at 5 am. While standing hours in complete silence, looking to the same empty tree.. inspiration returns.
- During some "works" with too much "timeouts" between "sessions", I take a read over some photography books.
- Avoid check stats on every agency.

For your specific case, leaving behind regular workplace, can refresh Your mind.. 

Quote from: lisafx on February 23, 2012, 17:47

I have the opposite problem.  Notebooks filled with ideas, and absolutely NO desire not enough time to shoot them. 

Ditto apart from my amendment.

+1 on this. Too many ideas, too little time.

Hi Wut,

 My location for the shoot usually drives my shot list as well as my casting.

Best,
Jonathan

Smoke weed
Drink wiskey

About everything you see have been photographed a million times by someone else (or you and someone else). So looking for ideas I go through my stock and look at interesting / new combinations. Something, which might symbolizes something else if taken out of its ordinary environment. Will not necessarily use what I got, but it sometimes gets the creative juices flowing again. It obviously also helps if you are a bit nuts and see things most other people do not......

So it looks like drugs are the answer (alcohol is a drug too;)

Normal people like me do not need drugs,..ugs,...ugs,...ugs.....

Just to get this straight, I sincerely hope you are not insinuating that just because I said that it might help if you are, that I am actually nuts,...uts,..uts 

Swing clubs, spanking, BDSM, etc. 

Swing clubs, spanking, BDSM, etc. 

I'm sure there's a market for that somewhere ...

I went for a coffee with my assistant today and she gave me a couple of ideas. Called my fav model today and I have a shoot planned for Thurday or Friday. Happy!