Recently where I live there was some major storm activity. The rain was amazing: I've never seen so much in such a short space of time. Neither had my city as most of it's storm water drains overflowed and we were in the midst of a 1 in a 100 year flood! It only took 12 hours to go from a light sprinkle of rain to flooding the city.

Now this would make a great theme for some photographs. Actually there could be several themes here, storms, floods, floating cars!, broken fences, a lot to choose from. Say we picked storms as the theme. Ok now we've got to brainstorm as many things as we can think of that relate to storms:

* Clouds

* Rain

* Thunder

* Lightening

* Umbrellas

* Snow

* Hail

* People running for cover

* Puddles

So now we have a list of things to try to photograph, see how this works? It's really just a tool to get your mind thinking about things differently. Here's another example: toasters! How many places can you take a photograph of a toaster?

* Your kitchen

* Do you have one at work?

* Your friends houses

* The dump

* At a garage sale

* At the local coffee shop

These lists can become really huge! But it's a great way to come up with interesting new angles to look at things. It doesn't have to be as silly as toasters either, you could do a set of themed photos about your partner or kids. Photos of them at home, work and play could make a great present for their next birthday or Christmas.

So how many themes can you think of? Start brainstorming now...