We picked ten of our favorites from the list of 52 photography projects over at Techradar.
Challenge yourself and follow two of these tips every week this summer, or take the idea even further and start a daily picture challenge. I guarantee you will see a big change in your images, as well as your creativity. Go ahead and start today!
Food Landscapes
Spice up your food photography! All you need is a set of model figures – Hornby 00 gauge figures are perfect, as they’re available in a wide range of poses. Preiser has a great range too. The most important aspect is to establish a sense of narrative. Here you can see that there’s a conversation between the characters, with the mountaineer on the ‘mash face’ being helped by his colleagues on the ground.
Flowers In Ice
A relatively inexpensive way of taking ‘kitchen sink’ close-ups that look great blown up as wall art. Freeze flowers in plastic containers of distilled or de-ionised water (available through your local auto or hardware store). The flowers will float, so try to weigh them down or fasten them in place so that they freeze under the water. Place the block of ice on top of a clear bowl or glass in a white sink or plate, so that the light can bounce through from below. Position a flashgun off to one side, angled down towards it, and shoot from the opposite side.
Still Life Light Trails
Light trails can be used in all kinds of photography, but they’re perfect for a creative still life project. You can use a regular Maglite torch, but try removing the end to reveal the bulb and make the light more direct. Use some electrical tape to attach a coloured sweet wrapper, which you can use as a makeshift ‘gel’. Set the canera’s shutter speed to around 30 secs with an aperture of around f/8, then start moving the torch within the frame before pressing the shutter. Continue the movement throughout the exposure. Here, we suspended the torch from a piece of string and made a gentle circular movement to create a spiral around the bottle.
Shoot The Uninspiring
Write down a list of locations or items that you find dull, depressing, ugly, boring or annoying. Now push yourself to make beautiful and interesting photographs of these unphotogenic subjects.
Naked Night Photography
Shoot outdoors at night without using flash, a long exposure or a tripod. For this project, challenge yourself to only use available light and a high ISO setting.
Small World
Photographing miniature toys and models in real-world environments is a popular photo project and one that you can easily fit around your day job. Try taking a small prop with you and photographing it in a range of situations – everywhere from the daily commute to a weekend stroll. To blend the model in with the rest of the scene you’ll need to get close to the subject and balance the light. If your subject is cast in shadow, use your flash to add fill-in lighting.
Recreate a Tilt-Shift Effect
The ’toytown’ effect that you can get from using an expensive tilt-shift lens ‘incorrectly’ is addictive. But you can achieve a very similar look in Photoshop by blurring all but a small area of an image. For the most convincing effect, shoot the scene from a high viewpoint on a sunny day to heighten the ‘model village’ look.
A-Z photos
Rather than simply shoot a photo alphabet made up of letters on roadsigns and shop fronts, find objects and shapes that resemble letters. For example, the frame of swings in a play-park forming the letter A, or the curve of a rivers forming an S-shape.
Intentional Photo Mistakes
Write a list of typical photography mistakes, then go out and see if you can take successful images that illustrate each of the ideas. Severely overexpose or underexpose pictures. Crop a subject awkwardly. Focus on the backdrop instead of the subject or intentionally include flare in the frame.
Faceless Portraits
Take a portrait of a different person every week without including their face in the frame. How can you reveal aspects of their personality without the aid of eye contact and expression? Use the environment, the lighting, colours, props other parts of their body – particularly their hands – to reveal character instead.
Read more tips over at Techradar.
Source: Techradar
Erin-Emely Britt