What to Shoot When You Have Nothing to Shoot

That barn story is going to be the heart of this blog. Let's go. 🔥

What to Shoot When You Have Nothing to Shoot

There's a folder on my computer from years ago — a collection of photos I took while driving around at blue hour on weekend mornings. Old barns. Weathered wood, sagging rooflines, rusted tin. Ugly, honestly, in the way that only very old things that have lived through a lot can be ugly.

I didn't know what I was doing with them. I just knew the light was doing something interesting and I wanted to point my camera at it.

I tucked them away and mostly forgot about them. Then one day I started collecting old farmhouse window panes — thick wooden frames, wavy glass, the kind you find at estate sales and antique shops. I had my favorite barn photos printed on canvas matboard and mounted them behind the glass. Finished the backs with hanging hardware. Ended up with sixteen pieces.

I took them to local libraries. Got write-ups in the papers. Had one in an art gallery. Sold some at a local art store. Had strangers message me saying I'd shot their grandfather's barn, sharing memories I never could have known existed.

A lot of those barns are gone now. Roads and subdivisions where farmland used to be. I have pieces of history hanging in my house that exist nowhere else.

And I shot all of it on a Canon Rebel with a kit lens, still figuring out what I was doing, with editing that was way too contrasty because I thought that made it look better. It didn't. But it didn't matter.

I didn't know those drives would turn into anything. I was just going out and shooting.

That's the whole lesson, honestly. But let's back up.

The Practice Trap Nobody Warns You About

When I was learning, I had young kids at home and couldn't just leave whenever inspiration struck. So I got creative. I shot baby bottles lined up in the fridge. The corner of an ornate picture frame. Hands on a clock. The underside of a mushroom. Rotten banana peels. Chunks of ginger root.

I was getting in reps. I was practicing. I was being resourceful.

I was also jumping around so much between subjects that I never actually got better at shooting any of them.

Here's the thing about practice that took me embarrassingly long to figure out: random reps build random skills. If you're shooting a mushroom one day, your kid's face the next, and a bird in the backyard the day after that, you're not building a skill — you're just taking pictures. Which is fine! But if your goal is to actually improve at something specific, the scattered approach will leave you frustrated wondering why nothing is clicking.

The solution isn't to make practice harder. It's to make it more focused.

Creative Constraints Are the Cheat Code

One of the most useful things I ever did was constrain myself on purpose. I decided the game was: the more boring, ugly, or mundane the object, the better. Could I make it look beautiful anyway?

Suddenly I wasn't staring around the house wondering what to shoot. I had a mission. And with every object, I'd ask myself — how many different angles can I find? Does it look better in direct sunlight or shade? What happens if I get ridiculously close? What if I shoot it from below?

That's a completely different kind of practice than just pointing your camera at something and hoping.

Here are a few constraints worth trying when you genuinely don't know where to start:

One color. Pick yellow. Now find yellow. A lemon, sure — but also a person in a yellow hat surrounded by dark shadows, a yellow pencil, yellow crayons spelling out the word yellow. Suddenly you're not shooting objects, you're solving a visual puzzle.

Texture only. How do you make someone feel something just through texture? A soft fuzzy blanket around a sleeping cat reads as comfort. A wall with paint so dry it's cracking and curling at the edges reads as something else entirely. Same constraint, totally different emotional result.

One light source. Window light only. No moving it, no supplementing it. Figure out how to make that work for whatever you're shooting.

One subject, ten different photos. Don't move on until you've found ten genuinely different angles, distances, or approaches to the same thing. This one will make you a better photographer faster than almost anything else because it forces you past the obvious shot.

The constraint isn't the limitation. The constraint is the thing that makes it interesting.

What to Do When You Want to Shoot People But Can't

If portraits are your thing — and for a lot of us, that's the goal — practicing on household objects only gets you so far. I know this frustration intimately. Packing up kids and driving somewhere decent just to practice felt wildly inefficient. So I mostly didn't, and then wondered why my portrait skills weren't improving as fast as I wanted.

The honest answer is that portrait photography requires portraits. But there are ways to get reps in without a full production.

Your own hands. Seriously — hands in different light, different positions, holding different things. You'll learn more about focus, depth of field, and light direction than you expect.

One willing human in your house in one room with one window. You don't need a location. You need light, a subject, and intention.

Your kids, but with a specific goal. Not "let me take some photos of the kids" — that's how you end up with a card full of blurry chaos. Pick one skill: nailing focus on a moving subject, exposing correctly in mixed light, finding a flattering angle in an unflattering room. Now shoot with that one goal in mind.

The point isn't the subject. It's the problem you're trying to solve.

Go Find the Light First

Here's what I didn't know I was doing on those blue hour barn drives: I was finding the light first and then finding a subject for it.

That's actually backwards from how most people practice. Most people look for a subject and then figure out the light situation. But if you flip it — if you go find genuinely interesting light and then look for something worth putting in it — you'll surprise yourself with what you come home with.

Good light makes almost any subject interesting. The hay bales and dilapidated barns near my house weren't remarkable. But at blue hour, with that particular quality of light sitting on them, they were. I didn't need a better subject. I needed to show up at the right time.

Look for light first. Subjects will follow.

If lighting is the part that keeps tripping you up — whether you're practicing at home or finally out shooting somewhere worth photographing — The Lighting Solution is the shortcut. It's five hands-on lighting scenario walkthroughs, 30 minutes, and it'll change how you see light before you even pick up your camera. Grab it here.

The Photos You Don't Think Are Special

I want to go back to those barns for a second, because there's something in that story that matters beyond the art project.

Those photos weren't technically great. The editing was overdone. I was still figuring things out. And I almost didn't take them at all, because what was I going to do with a bunch of barn photos?

Turns out, quite a lot. But I couldn't have known that in the moment. I just went out and shot what interested me, tucked the photos away, and let time do the rest.

You don't always know what a photo is worth when you take it. Sometimes the value shows up years later when you finally know what to do with it. Sometimes a stranger messages you about their grandfather's barn. Sometimes two photos from entirely different days end up being the thing that makes a project finally make sense.

The practice shoots that feel pointless in the moment are still building something. The eye you're developing by shooting anything with intention is the same eye you'll use when something important is in front of your lens.

Go shoot something. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be interesting.

It just has to be on purpose.