Top 11 'Creative-Block-Busting' Photo Challenges to try for Instagram when your hometown feels completely overshot. - Goh Ling Yong
We’ve all been there. You scroll through Instagram, seeing epic landscapes from Iceland and bustling street scenes from Tokyo, and then you look out your window. At the same street. The same park. The same buildings you’ve seen a thousand times. A familiar thought creeps in: "My hometown is boring. I've shot everything here."
That feeling of being creatively drained by your surroundings is one of the biggest hurdles for any photographer. It’s easy to believe that fresh inspiration only comes with a plane ticket. But what if I told you that the problem isn’t your town, but your perspective? The most powerful creative breakthroughs happen not when we change our location, but when we change how we see the location we're in.
This is where challenges come in. By imposing specific rules and constraints, we force our brains to get off autopilot. We start noticing details we’d otherwise ignore and find beauty in the mundane. Think of it as a creative workout for your photographic eye. Here are 11 'creative-block-busting' photo challenges designed to make you fall in love with your "overshot" hometown all over again.
1. The "One Lens, One Hour" Challenge
The paradox of choice is a real creativity killer. With a bag full of lenses—a wide-angle, a telephoto, a nifty-fifty—we can spend more time swapping glass than actually looking for a shot. This challenge strips all that away. The mission is simple: pick one prime lens (a 35mm or 50mm is perfect for this), set a timer for 60 minutes, and go.
By limiting yourself to a single focal length, you’re forced to “zoom with your feet.” You have to physically move closer to your subject or step back to change your composition. This makes you more intentional and physically engaged with your environment. You’ll stop passively observing and start actively hunting for frames that work within your single perspective, leading to a more consistent and thoughtful set of images.
Pro-Tip: Don't just wander aimlessly. Pick a small area, like a two-block radius around your favorite coffee shop. The combination of a time limit and a geographic boundary forces you to dig deep and find the extraordinary in a very ordinary space. You'll be amazed at what you can capture when you’re forced to work with less.
2. The Abstract Architecture Hunt
You’ve probably taken a dozen photos of that iconic clock tower or the modern art museum downtown. But have you ever ignored the building as a whole and focused only on its parts? This challenge is all about deconstructing the familiar and turning it into abstract art.
Instead of capturing the entire structure, look for compelling lines, repeating patterns, interesting textures, or the dramatic play of light and shadow on a single wall. Get up close to the facade. Point your camera straight up the side of a skyscraper. Focus on the curve of a staircase or the geometric pattern of a window grid. Your goal is to create an image where the subject isn't immediately identifiable as a building, but rather as a captivating collection of shapes and tones.
Pro-Tip: The best light for this is often harsh midday sun, which creates deep, defined shadows and highlights textures. Convert your photos to black and white in post-production to further emphasize the forms and lines, removing the distraction of color.
3. The "Look Up, Look Down" Project
As photographers, we spend most of our time shooting at eye level, which is exactly how everyone else sees the world. To break out of a creative rut, you need to literally change your point of view. For one entire photo walk, forbid yourself from shooting anything straight ahead. You can only point your camera up or down.
Looking down reveals a hidden world of textures in the pavement, forgotten street art, manhole covers with intricate designs, and stunning reflections in puddles after a rainstorm. Looking up reveals unexpected architectural details, the stark silhouettes of trees against the sky, the complex web of power lines, or the reflection of the street in the glass of a skyscraper. This simple shift forces you to see your town from two completely fresh and under-explored angles.
4. The Color Palette Challenge
This is one of my personal favorites for re-igniting a creative spark. Choose one, or at most two, specific colors and spend the day shooting only subjects that feature those colors prominently. For example, you could decide to only photograph the color yellow. Suddenly, your brain will be on high alert for yellow taxis, a yellow raincoat, daffodils in a park, a lemon in a grocery store window, or a painted yellow door.
This challenge does two things brilliantly. First, it simplifies the chaotic visual noise of a city, giving you a clear and simple mission. Second, it trains your eye to see beyond subjects and start seeing in terms of color theory. When you gather all the photos at the end, you'll have an incredibly cohesive and visually striking series for your Instagram grid that tells a unique story about your town.
Pro-Tip: Use a tool like Adobe Color or Coolors to find an interesting two or three-color palette for an even greater challenge. Trying to find subjects that contain both cobalt blue and burnt orange, for example, will seriously push your observational skills.
5. The "Through The..." Frame
A powerful way to add depth and context to your images is by using a technique called "framing within a frame." This challenge requires you to find natural frames in your environment and shoot your subject through them.
Look for doorways, arches, windows, gaps between buildings, low-hanging tree branches, or even the space created by someone’s arm. Placing your main subject inside this natural frame draws the viewer’s eye directly to it. It makes a simple scene feel more deliberate, layered, and professionally composed. It’s a classic compositional tool that forces you to slow down and construct your shot rather than just taking a snapshot.
6. The Shadow Play Project
Light is everything in photography, but we often forget that its counterpart—shadow—is just as powerful. For this challenge, you are no longer photographing things; you are photographing the shadows they cast. It’s a fundamental shift that changes everything about how you see the world.
The best time for this is during the golden hours—early morning and late afternoon—when the low sun creates long, dramatic shadows. Look for the graphic shadow of a bicycle leaning against a wall, the elongated silhouette of a person walking, or the repeating pattern of a fence cast across a sidewalk. These fleeting moments turn the mundane into something mysterious and artistic. It’s an exercise in seeing light, form, and time itself.
7. The "Ten Photos on One Street" Challenge
This challenge, a favorite of mine which I, Goh Ling Yong, often recommend to students, is the ultimate cure for the "I've seen it all" mentality. Pick the most "boring" or familiar street you can think of—maybe the one you live on. Your mission is to walk its length and not leave until you have taken ten unique, compelling, and distinct photographs.
At first, you’ll grab the obvious shots. The interesting storefront, the cool mural. But by photo number seven, you'll be struggling. This is where the magic happens. You’ll be forced to notice the tiny details: the texture of a brick wall, the way light hits a doorknob, a single weed growing through a crack in the pavement. This exercise proves that there are endless photo opportunities everywhere; you just have to look closer.
8. The Minimalist Composition Quest
Our towns are often visually chaotic. This challenge is about finding the calm within that chaos. Your goal is to create images that are incredibly simple, clean, and focused on a single subject. The key ingredient here is negative space—the empty area around your subject.
Look for a lone tree on a hill, a single bird on a wire against a clear sky, a brightly colored fire hydrant against a plain concrete wall, or the simple line of a pier extending into calm water. To achieve this, you often have to change your angle, getting low to the ground to use the sky as a clean background, or shooting straight down at a simple object on the pavement. Embracing minimalism is a powerful way to make your Instagram feed feel more curated and impactful.
9. The "Unseen Faces" Street Portrait Series
Street photography can be intimidating, especially when it comes to photographing strangers. This challenge allows you to capture the human element of your town in a way that feels more approachable and often, more artistic. The rule: capture people, but without showing their faces.
Focus on details that tell a story. Capture a musician’s hands on a guitar, an elderly couple’s hands clasped on a park bench, a child’s brightly colored boots splashing in a puddle, or the silhouette of a lone figure against a sunset. These images are filled with emotion and mystery, allowing the viewer to imagine their own narrative. It’s a beautiful way to document the life of your city while respecting people's privacy.
10. The Puddlegram Adventure (After the Rain)
Don’t put your camera away when the weather turns bad! A rainy day is a gift to a photographer stuck in a rut. Once the downpour stops, grab your camera and go hunting for puddles. They are magical, temporary mirrors that literally turn your world upside down.
Get your camera as low to the ground as you can and capture the reflections of buildings, traffic lights, trees, and people. A boring patch of asphalt is suddenly transformed into a portal to another world. The resulting images are often surreal, painterly, and completely different from how you’d normally see a scene. It's the perfect way to show a familiar landmark in a completely new light.
11. The "Nightcrawler" Neon & Light Trail Challenge
Your town has a split personality. The place you know during the day transforms into something completely different after the sun goes down. Exploring your hometown at night is one of the best ways to bust a creative block. Forget landscapes and traditional scenes; this challenge is about capturing artificial light.
You'll need a tripod for this one. Set up on a bridge over a busy road and use a slow shutter speed (a few seconds or more) to turn car headlights and taillights into beautiful, flowing rivers of red and white light. Hunt for old neon signs, the warm glow from a restaurant window, or the cool, colorful lights of a movie theater marquee. Night photography forces you to work more slowly and deliberately, and the reward is seeing your familiar streets become a vibrant, electric wonderland. A key lesson we emphasize on the Goh Ling Yong blog is that changing the time of day is as powerful as changing your location.
Your Turn to Shoot
The feeling that your hometown is "overshot" is just that—a feeling. It’s not a fact. The creative potential of a place is never truly exhausted; it's our ability to see it that gets tired. These challenges are designed to be a reset button for your eyes and your imagination. They push you out of your comfort zone and force you to engage with your surroundings in a new and exciting way.
So here's my challenge to you: Pick just one of these 11 ideas. The one that excites or even slightly intimidates you the most. Dedicate a couple of hours this week to trying it out. You don’t need a new camera or a new city; you just need a new mission.
Which challenge are you going to try first? Share your results on Instagram and tag us—we’d love to see how you rediscover your hometown! And if you have another favorite creative-block-busting challenge, drop it in the comments below.
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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