During a recent event shoot, which I greatly enjoyed doing, I thought a little about how to stay fresh.

Event shoots do not naturally lend themselves to setting up creative lighting. But you can still do things like this:

How? Using a wide angle lens, close to the cake.

Or like this:

How? By setting shutter speed to 1/15th second, and zooming while shooting.

Or even this:

How? Essentially like before, but without flash.

The point: when you are shooting a routine thing, try to step outside the box a little. I do this by thinking “what would I normally do”, and then varying lens, aperture, shutter, composition, and so on, and just seeing what happens.

That way your shoot is more fun, and you might stumble upon new ideas or develop new techniques.