Recently, I have been feeling that photography has become too structured and systematic for me.

While this may sound good on paper, recently I had found myself longing for the excitement and curiosity during the phase that I was just learning, and didn’t know much about photography other than pressing the shutter button.

I was shooting on full auto mode, using my polarizer for every shot, shooting without a tripod on low- light situations……all the “wrong” things, but at least I was having a lot of fun shooting compositions that interested me.

After I had taken a great photography course, I had finally learned and understood everything about how my camera operates, the best way to compose, how to shoot in certain situations, when to use a tripod and polarizer, etc.

Also, I began to mimic what other photographers were doing on YouTube, and the various social media sites, when I saw their photos and felt inspired.

I began to structure things, obsess about my shooting workflow, and had become more and more selective with the shots I was taking.

I thought that was a great direction to head to, and in some ways, it was.

However, over time I had realized that I began to photograph less often, and had become maybe too selective in the photos I had taken.

I didn’t want to take any pictures unless I felt the conditions, compositiona, and settings was perfect for a great picture that I would want to keep forever.

I had so much information and so many processes in my head, I found myself getting stressed and uninspired.

So that’s why I felt I needed a photography reboot.

I was overloaded with the technical concepts, along with the do’s and don’ts of shooting, and I feel that led me to over analyze every shot.

I had simply taken in too much information, and I was overloaded with the technical (right/wrong) concepts, rather than shooting naturally and creatively.

So what it a photography reboot?

It’s a process that I had began recently, by pretending that I’ve never picked up a camera before.

On my camera, I deleted all of the changes in settings that some other photographers said I should make to my camera.

I deleted all the settings that I entered, based on what I have read and videos I had watched, and completely started from scratch.

Basically, I reset my camera to factory settings, and decided to again go through the process of setting it up, but only with the settings related to how and I what I liked to shoot.

I set the dial to full auto mode.

Then I headed on some nearby adventures, with my 2 lenses (wide angle and telephoto), both with polarizers attached, and a large memory card.

I pretended like I was shooting for the first time.

I basically just shot everything that I wanted to shoot, by simply pressing the shutter button once I liked what I saw in my viewfinder.

No composition rules, no aperture changes, no exposure bracketing or focus stacking….i basically abandoned all of the methods that I had learned from all the sources, and took photos like I used to when I was learning and fumbling through things.

I did this over the course of a week, just going to nearby places like parks, pastures, and nearby river walks.

So what did I learn from this?

After the first day, as expected, I did encounter the limitations by using auto mode on a good amount (but not all) of my shots.

I found shots that had a too narrow or too shallow depth of field, and others that were taken with less than ideal shutter speed, especially my water shots.

So far, this exercise justified putting my dial setting back to Aperture Value (Av), like I had before. This gave me control back to my aperture, and indirectly my shutter speed, and this exercise proved that Av mode was very important to my preferred shooting technique.

I also felt my natural technique required some other settings I used before, like back button focus, and returning the histogram in my live view as I shot, so I put these changes back as well.

The bottom line is, I had reset my camera from factory settings, using only the changes that mattered and applied to me, and didn’t bother with all of the other settings that other photographers had told me I should use.

This process was very refreshing.

I also studied the photos I had taken during this reboot, and felt my compositions were quite good.

Rather than focusing on the rules of composition, I shot with the concept of keeping only interesting objects throughout the frame, and eliminating the rest.

I composed each shot mainly on the basis of balance, and shot every composition not because it followed the rules, but because it simply looked interesting to me.

Now I’m back to shooting like I was, but now my flow seems more fluid and creative.

I no longer feel that I am obsessing over random and insignificant settings, due to the over abundance of information I used to carry around with me.

I predict I will add some more methods back to my shooting (focus stacking, compression with my zoom, etc.), but only with my discretion, and when my style dictates that I need to pull them out of my toolbox.

This was a very refreshing change, so much that I even decided to do this with my photo editing as well.

If you have been feeling overwhelmed with all the information and photography rules, I recommend you give this concept a try!

I would also like to hear in the comments, if this method had helped you in some way.