I realized today that my photography has been exhibiting a definite trend towards more experimentation — first long-exposure night photography, followed by the opposite, high-speed photography, then astrophotography, camera tossing, the Holga, and stitching panoramas. I'm about to start experimenting with infrared photography, and eventually I still really want to get a large format view camera.

This increasing desire to experiment, I think, is due to the boredom I've developed with my photography and my surroundings. Because my days are often a straightforward repetition of my simple routine (sleep work tv), I see the same surroundings every day, and I'm sick of them. Sometimes I see some other photographer's photos of things in his backyard, and I love the photos, and I remind myself that other people are not nearly as bored of the things around me as I am. But I just can't work up any interest in photographing the things I see every day.

And I think that it's precisely because I never feel like I can come up with anything interesting anymore that I have started exploring less traditional forms of photography. The images produced by these techniques are inherently novel, even when the subject matter is uninteresting. Through a Holga, a picture of a leaf in a dull office building becomes a moody, engaging photo. It saves me from having to provide the originality myself.

I am excited about infrared, though. One of the aspects of my life that bugs me the most is the lack of color variety; the few parts of my surroundings that aren't gray are green, and I'm tired of both. One of the most identifiable characteristics of IR photography is the otherwordly color rendition; skies become nearly black, and green foliage renders bright white — I think it might make my environs feel much less tired and stale.

Unfortunately, my camera is not very well suited for infrared — like most digital cameras, it has an infrared-blocking filter inside the camera, just in front of the sensor. On some cameras, like the Nikon D70 that Jeff has, the filter is not very effective and a significant amount of IR light gets through. Sadly, though, the filter on the Canon 300D manages to filter out most of the light. The filter can be removed, but then any regular, visible light photography would look bad unless I used an equivalent IR-blocking filter on the front of my lens, and I don't think I want to be forced to use a filter for all of my pictures from now on. Even 300Ds can still be used without removing the internal filter — as effective as it is, some IR light does get past it. But the light that makes it through is so little that daytime exposures then last seconds or minutes. I guess I'll see how well that works, and how I like the results, before I start considering more drastic actions. Either way, I'm excited about the idea and can't wait to start experimenting with it.