One way to test your skills and to improve your creativity at the same time is to set yourself a shooting challenge. In this video, Nigel Danson and James Popsys go head-to-head with the challenge of shooting landscapes with only a 70mm focal length.

It’s all too easy to stagnate in photography. You find a genre you enjoy, you find the lens and focal length you like, and you end up shooting similar images over and over again. It is important to break out of these periods of stagnation and one way to do that is setting yourself a challenge.

I have forced myself to do challenges similar to this one on many occasions. The way I go about it is to take only a prime and one camera body on a day trip or photography outing and I just have to make it work. You’ll be shocked at how much you see and what you can do when you have strict limitations. Rather than reaching for the obvious shot, you’re forced to get creative and moved around to make something work.

In this video, two great landscape photographers and YouTubers, do exactly that and some of the resulting images are superb.

Do you ever set yourself these sorts of limitations? Perhaps you only take out one lens, or restrict the number of shots you can take. Share your experiences in the comments.