If you’re getting creatively drained, then trying a new aspect ratio is an incredible way to get the creative juices flowing and your mind thinking in a new way. One of my favorite aspect ratios in the panoramic format. Specifically, if you want to shoot to mimic what the X Pan can do, then you should shoot in a very specific way. Some cameras have the 65:24 format, and this is the panoramic format that more or less puts two 35mm pieces of film next to one another. So when you’re getting this going, try this.
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Sometimes it’s not enough to just shoot in the wide-screen format that the X Pan allows. Often, you need to get even more abstract and crazy. Trust me when I say this: stick with this for an entire week and see what you make.
Stop the lens down to f8 and don’t move it from there. Shoot at a low ISO until you can get around 1/15th shutter speed. Then as you’re shooting your images, do some in-camera movement. You’ll create abstract photos that make people need to stare at the image and think about what they’re looking at. This is what photography is supposed to do.
More importantly, it leaves so much of the scene up to the interpretation of the person looking. If everything is crystal clear, then you’re working with someone’s thinking to make it predictable. When something is predictable, we ignore the scene in front of us. But when we stare at a scene and try to understand what we’re working with, we make images that people ponder and think over.
Better yet, this can be applied to nearly any type of photography: portraits, landscapes, wildlife, etc. So don’t just shoot in the X Pan format, combine it with in-camera movement.