Five Ways to Feed Your Creativity for $35 or Less

Starting this week, I’m diving head-first into a plethora of creative endeavors and I hope not to overwhelm myself. While there’s a huge variety of free inspiration to be found, sometimes you need to shell out a little bit of cash to get quality material, tutorials or one-on-one interaction.

In the world of photography, one can easily spend hundreds of dollars and come away feeling dazed and like they just threw their money down the toilet. SO many photography workbooks, workshops, tutorials and the like cost hundreds of dollars! I’m not saying they aren’t worth it, but I am not a professional. I just want to learn more about photography and take great pictures of my kids and my life. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t want to shell out $250 for a workshop or $400 for what amounts to a book.

I realize the value of paying for quality, but I also recognize a great deal when I see one. In this article, I’ve detailed several photographic resources or workshops I’ve recently purchased. All were right around $35 or less! I hope as I start or continue to use these resources, it will provide more fodder for my blog.

1. Love That Shot – $35

Love That Shot offers photography and photoshop tutorials with premium content for paying members. I signed up for a quarter’s worth of access because I was interested in taking their Blossom Workshop at the end of July. The workshop focuses on floral photography and is free for paying members, but $65 as a stand-alone. Joining up seemed like a no-brainer to me! You can also get monthly membership for $15. Their tutorial information is very good and they have some awesome freebies on their site. I’ll be writing more about their freebies in an upcoming article series on free texture and action resources.

Even though I don’t have a macro lens, I’m excited about the workshop. I figure you’ll probably tire of seeing the three flowering plants located on my patio, so I should probably plan on trips to the botanical gardens during this time.

2. Clickin’ Moms – $30

Clickin’ Moms is the largest group of women photographers I’ve seen collected. So many people whose blogs I follow are members of Clickin’ Moms and their photos are awesome! I’ve read nothing but great things about them, so when they had a discount promotion last week, I jumped on it. I signed up for six months for $27. I have to admit, part of the reason I signed up was their little blurb about “Optional Workshops” as a membership benefit. I did not realize until actually gaining access to the forums that these “Optional Workshops” are all $250+ and sell out so quickly that few members who are interested can ever register. It’s very difficult to get into any workshops unless you have a Lifetime Membership, at about $200. The forums seem very fun and I can’t wait to dive into them more, but I’m not sure if that alone is worth me continuing with them after my six months are done.

On the plus side, Amanda Padgett convinced me to sign up and I did so through her affiliate link. She thanked me by gifting me FIVE of her Everyday Actions for FREE! That alone was definitely worth the $27! I chose Cool and Crisp, Morning Light, Bluegrass, Hip Retro and Cow Special. I can’t wait to play around with them and see what they can do!

If you want a FREE resource similar to Clickin’ Moms but not nearly as developed, try out The Photo Moms. I’ve just joined their forum, but it seems comprehensive and has a lot of activity!

3. Photography Books – $36

Books are probably the cheapest way to get reliable photography information. Most photography books I’ve seen on Amazon are priced between $15-$45 so they are very affordable! The topics are varied, so you can select only the books you need or want to become a better photographer.

It was very difficult to limit myself to just two books! I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money all at once, nor did I want to overwhelm myself with information. Since having the kids, reading books is not something I get to do often. In fact, I need to finish reading Understanding Exposure before starting the two I just bought!

After diligently researching the contents of the book through the Look Inside feature and reading through reviews, I chose The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. I’m familiar with his Photoshop tutorials and it was so very difficult not buying one of his great photoshop books, but at the moment I want editing to take a back seat to learning photography. He’s up to his third volume of this book now. At first I was going to buy the third volume, but after looking inside and reading the first few pages, I realized that it’s a continuation of his second volume and it would be wise to start with the first. I’m excited to get this and start reading it! He phrases his tips very conversationally and states point-blank that he tells you how to achieve great results without delving too much into the “why”. He figures people will care more about why their photos are turning out great once they start seeing consistent results from their efforts. I like the idea of this approach since I learn so much more through example than book learning.

I found a whole series of photo workshop books by Photoworkshop.com and they’re all very highly rated with glowing reviews. They’re on the cheaper side of photography books, so I decided to try out Photographing Children Photo Workshop. Apparently you can go to the website and register for free to follow along with the assignments in the book. You can upload your assignment submission and view others.

As a side note, if you like shopping at Amazon.com and you’re not a member of Amazon Prime, I cannot recommend it enough. You pay $79 for a year’s worth of access and get free 2-day shipping on all Amazon Prime eligible orders. We actually LOVE this because we don’t like shopping for most things in a store. Using Prime saves a lot in shipping costs over the course of the year if you purchase frequently from Amazon and they almost always have a lower price than a brick and mortar store. Think of it as saving yourself time and gas! You can get a lot more from Amazon than books and movies too. We get a lot of household items and toys there. I’ve even bought vitamins and hair products off Amazon before! With Prime I know that I’ll get my order quickly and can buy almost anything I want without worrying about shipping costs.

4. Problogger’s Build a Better Blog in 31 Days – $15-20

I’ve already talked about this quite a bit. On July 19, a group of bloggers over at Bloggy Bootcamp’s BlogFrog forum will be participating in Problogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook. I’ve been blogging for over 10 years, but this is the first blog I’ve had with a true purpose. I hope following through the workbook’s suggestions will help me improve my content and gain me some readers. It will be reassuring going through the 30 day process with a large group of other bloggers as well and I can only imagine that will increase my readership a little bit as well.

There is still time to take advantage of the 25% off by participating with the group! Just head on over to the BlogFrog discussion thread to sign up. The ebook is regularly $39 and they’re running a promo right now at $20. That means it’s only $15 if you use the coupon code: BlogFrog25! What a great deal!

I’ve read through most of this ebook and a lot of the tips can be found on Problogger’s website, if you want to dig for it. The workbook puts all the tips together into cohesive lessons with assignments. The book itself is about 90 pages, but if you go through and read all the recommended links, it’s probably closer to a 400 page workbook. If you’re interested in being a better blogger, I definitely recommend joining us on the 19th!

5. Simplicity Photography eCourse – $20

I saved the best, as I promise you this is by far the best value of all the great deals listed here!

Simplicity Photography eCourse started on Monday! The instructor, Faith, is an amateur photographer who takes wonderful photographs and I feel so privileged to be taught by her in an environment of other really good photographers! The interactive portion of the class is on my favorite photographic website, Flickr and it’s working out so well! Each week includes two PDF lessons which are short and make for easy reading, but are packed with tips and tricks! Her writing is conversational and easy to follow and she uses photographic examples to illustrate her points, which I love. There are two assignments each week and a guest photographer is invited each week to critique the submissions. Faith responds very quickly to all submissions and questions and is a wonderful workshop host!

She is offering a more advanced DSLR eCourse starting in September! Registration will open soon and starts at $22. In August the price will be raised to $25, so register early! I already know I’m taking her workshop in September, so I would love to work alongside you!

Week One of this course is about Lighting and Potographing People. It’s a wonderful start as lighting is one of the most challenging aspects of photography. Our first assignment was to photograph an object near a light source from three different angles and post the straight-out-of-the-camera results. My results are shown above. Both Mr. Serious and Boa were nearby when I was trying to complete this assignment and keeping their hands off the object being photographed was impossible. I meant to shoot in manual mode to make sure I was challenging myself to the full extent, but I honestly forgot! I was just trying to take some shots before the kids knocked over my subject. Still, the experiment was very enlightening and I think it deserves repeating from time to time.

If you’re kicking yourself for missing the registration for the beginner’s class, as you should be, Faith is offering it again in October! Have no fear!

It’s a crazy expensive world out there for photographers, so I hope you found one affordable way to boost your creativity and improve your skill through my links. Please feel free to leave a comment with your suggestion to feed your creativity for under $35!