Range Target Shadow Boxes on Red Background Art Project
52 photography projects: a great technique to attempt every week of the year
Our pick of the perfect weekend photography projects
(Prototype: © Sue McArthur / Shutterstock)
Looking for photography projects to stimulate your inventiveness? Whether you're a beginner who's just learning the ropes or a seasoned snapper in demand of inspiration, trying out a new technique can help y'all abound as a photographer. That's why the list below features our pick of the best ideas to try with your photographic camera.
From painting with light trails to capturing twilight landscapes, at that place are countless creative ways to apply your camera and its lens. This round-up of our favorite weekend projects features suggestions to arrange every skill level – whether you're shooting with a smartphone or a 'proper' camera like a DSLR.
Some you can do from the comfort of you home, while others will have you heading out in search of specific scenes. Whether information technology'southward a novel technique or an inventive suggestion for finding fresh subjects, every idea below has i thing in mutual: it should challenge y'all to try something dissimilar and find a fresh perspective.
Most of the projects can be attempted using the equipment yous already own. Those that do require additional materials should all be achievable with pocket-money purchases – and if in that location's any crafting involved, it should be well worth the effort when you run across the results.
We've shared 52 of our favorite suggestions to do in 2022 beneath. Try them all and, in a yr'south fourth dimension, there's a good chance you'll be a better photographer, with a keener understanding of your photographic camera and what it's capable of. Plus you'll be all set to endeavor the terminal project: self-publishing a photo volume.
The best domicile photography projects:
one. Water driblet fine art
The basic idea with this project is to append a container of liquid and let drops fall through a pocket-sized hole, then capture the resulting splash. Timing the shutter as the splash is created is everything. We achieved good results using two flashguns set to their lowest power (1/128th), an aperture of f/22 and water mixed with Xanthan gum to make a more than mucilaginous solution. Nosotros besides used a SplashArt h2o drib kit from PhotoTrigger, which helped to regulate the size and frequency of the drops.
2. Indoor splash shots
For this project you'll need a flashgun that you tin fire remotely, a container with clear sides for your water, a coloured groundwork and a tripod. Fix the container and backdrop, then position the flash over the container. With the camera on a tripod and set to manual focus and exposure - f/8, ISO200 and the fastest shutter speed that will piece of work with your flash - drib the object into the h2o and fire the shutter as it hits.
3. Shapes of bokeh
Out-of-focus orbs of lite can add magic to any prototype, simply the bokeh effect needn't be express to standard circles. From love hearts to stars, a simple cutout filter tin transform background sparkles into brilliant shapes.
Using your lens cap as a guide, depict a circle on a piece of card. Cut out the circle, score a pocket-sized shape in the eye using scissors or a arts and crafts pocketknife, and so push button the card onto the front of your lens (or attach it with an elastic ring). When y'all next shoot a scene, whatever unfocused light will take the form of your shape.
Use a broad aperture to maximize the effect and remember that, every bit the filter restricts the amount of light entering your lens, you'll desire to fix a longer exposure or higher ISO. Try uncomplicated shapes such equally triangles to get started, before progressing to stars, hearts, crosses and more.
4. Create smoke art
Fume trails are a firm favourite among still-life photographers. Merely how about taking information technology to the next level and using the shapes in a creative Photoshop projection. In one case yous've taken a few good fume art photos, make a bare certificate in Photoshop, then copy and paste ane of the smoke images into it. Set the blending mode to Screen and use Warp Transform to reshape it. Go along the process to combine a range of smoke shots into a new image.
5. DIY lightbox
Lightboxes are used to illuminate objects evenly against a plain background, often for the purposes of product or nutrient photography. Luckily, you don't have to have a pro budget to make i at dwelling house. All you need is a cardboard box, some white paper and a table lamp.
Remove the summit flaps, stand the box on one stop and cut window holes in either side. Line the box with a single, seamless piece of white paper and cover the holes with thin paper or fabric, taped in place. Then it's equally simple every bit positioning a desk lamp on i or both sides: the paper volition diffuse the light, evenly illuminating any object yous put inside.
Or for an fifty-fifty simpler setup, use a single piece of paper as the backdrop, with one white wall made from card, and position about a window (every bit pictured). Experiment with aperture and shutter speed to shoot subjects with totally white backgrounds or some shadow for a sense of perspective. And then mix things upward with color backgrounds. If the quality is high plenty, you could list your images for sale on a stock photography website to earn some lockdown pocket money.
vi. Lubricate your lens
Want to requite your housebound portraits added glow? If you have a spare lens filter lying around, try an onetime Hollywood trick: smear a layer of Vaseline on the glass to give your images a soft, dreamy look, keeping aperture wide to emphasize the ethereal effect with a shallow depth of field.
Get experimental by leaving the middle of the filter free from Vaseline to create a halo effect, with the center in articulate focus simply the outer elements blurry and soft. Don't desire to sacrifice a filter? Stretch cling-film tight across the lens and go along it in place with an elastic band, before using the Vaseline in the same mode. If you lot're not into portraits, try the effect when shooting a calorie-free source for a unique style of improvidence.
7. Make your ain filters
It's no secret that color is a major element of any image, simply you don't need expensive filters or editing software to experiment with saturation. In fact, you don't even need to get out your home: all style of household objects can part as color filters to bring new hues to your photography – and to transform mundane moments into brighter snaps.
Attach tissue newspaper to your lens with an rubberband band for an instant change of scene, or endeavor shooting through sparse fabric with a light source placed behind. Too easy? Take a snap through a laundry capsule for a liquid tone aligning or utilise a whisky bottle for sepia shades with a hint of baloney. Petals are pretty effective, too, as are translucent sweet wrappers.
viii. Endeavour cross-polarization
This fun project exploits the consequence that polarised low-cal has on some plastics. You'll need two polarising filters - ideally i of these should be a sheet of polarising film. Yous can option up an A4 sail of Lee 239 polarising movie for £50 (try world wide web.robertwhite.co.united kingdom or world wide web.pnta.com). The sheet of pic should be placed on a lightbox or in forepart of the only light source. An iPad screen and most estimator screens have a polarising filter built in, so if you don't have a canvas of polarising film you can always experiment by creating a white document to fill the screen. Simply attach the round polariser to the photographic camera lens and rotate it to make the colours announced in clear plastic items
9. Nutrient landscapes
Spice up your food photography! All y'all need is a set of model figures - Hornby 00 gauge figures are perfect, as they're bachelor in a broad range of poses. Preiser has a great range too. The most important aspect is to establish a sense of narrative. Here y'all can see that there's a chat between the characters, with the mountaineer on the 'brew face' being helped by his colleagues on the ground.
ten. Fine-art food
Endeavour turning your dinner ingredients into photo art using just a lightbox and a very precipitous knife. Slice fruit and vegetables as thinly and evenly as possible, then place them on the lightbox. With the camera positioned directly in a higher place, use Live View to focus manually on the details. Gear up an discontinuity of f/viii to give acceptable depth of field, and dial in some exposure bounty of +1 to +3 stops equally the vivid light can fool the camera's meter into underexposure.
11. Flowers in ice
A relatively inexpensive way of taking 'kitchen sink' shut-ups that look smashing blown up as wall art. Freeze flowers in plastic containers of distilled or de-ionised water (bachelor through your local car or hardware store). The flowers will float, so try to weigh them downwardly or spike them in place so that they freeze nether the water. Place the block of ice on tiptop of a clear bowl or glass in a white sink or plate, and then that the light can bounce through from below. Position a flashgun off to one side, angled downwards towards it, and shoot from the opposite side.
12. Abstracts in oil
Oil floating on the surface of h2o is a great style to make striking abstracts. This table-pinnacle photo projection exploits the refractive quality of oil and bubbling to accentuate and distort colours. All you need to do is place a few drops of cooking oil on the surface of water in a glass dish. Make certain the dish is supported near 25cm nearly the table height, then place coloured newspaper under it and use an anglepoise lamp or flashgun to light the newspaper.
13. Play with fire
It doesn't accept a pyromaniac to see the photographic potential of fire, merely information technology does accept patience, skill and enough of precautionary measures to capture a stunning action shot of a match igniting. If you'd rather not risk singeing your fingertips, try a different type of flame photography.
Shooting by candlelight lone tin can lead to magical results. As with whatever single source of light, information technology allows you to experiment extensively with shadows – particularly if you're capturing a portrait – while the soft, warm tone and flicker of the flame both contribute to an specially ethereal effect.
In a darkened room, endeavour shooting with a medium-high ISO and a relatively slow shutter speed. Beginning with only a candle and your subject, before introducing additional elements and playing with positioning. A nearby wall, for instance, will throw the candlelight back in dissimilar ways, while glass will add to the magic with fiery reflections
Tweak shutter speed to affect the strength of shadows or try adding further flames – though you lot might demand to arrange the white rest if things wait more yellow than mellow.
14. Repaint the walls with camera obscura
Familiar with pinhole photography? That technique relies on camera obscura – a natural optical upshot that occurs when a small hole in an otherwise sealed space (such every bit a box) projects an inverted prototype of the world outside onto the reverse wall. You could make a pinhole camera as an at-home project, or you could go even bigger: with the correct setup, you can create the camera obscura miracle in an unabridged room.
First, you'll demand to black out a room – for example, by taping opaque sheets over your windows. And so you'll need to make an aperture through which light can enter; the smaller the hole, the sharper just dimmer the image. Photographic camera obscura works best in pocket-size/medium rooms, with an aperture of effectually 10-15mm diameter. Allow your eyes to conform and decide whether yous need to brighten the image past making a larger hole, so marvel as an inverted version of the outside world appears on the wall.
Capture the entirety of this remarkable natural effect using a broad angle, a relatively long exposure and a tripod, or focus on specific elements of your room to emphasis the upshot – such as houses appearing to float upside down on your mantelpiece.
15. Camera tossing
Chucking your precious photographic equipment into the air might audio like something designed to void the warranty, but – provided y'all're not likewise clumsy – camera tossing can deliver some truly spectacular results. Try it in a dark room with a unmarried low-cal source. Prepare a shutter speed of around one second (roughly the length of time information technology'll be in the air) and, as the timer hits zip, launch information technology upwards. Catching it is the important part, simply once you're comfortable with the technique y'all tin experiment with multiple light sources, different colors and even spinning your camera as you release it.
xvi. Psychedelic soap film
This is a wonderful project that makes for vibrant desktop wallpaper or abstract wall art. You'll need liquid soap mixed with glycerine for long-lasting soap film, plus a wire loop, a black cloth background and a macro lens of at least 100mm. The colours created by soap movie only appear when striking by lite from a certain angle, so set upwards near a north-facing window and shoot from effectually 45 degrees.
17. Refractive art
Low-cal bends when information technology passes through water, causing the objects behind to change appearance. This is called refraction, and you'll make utilise of this phenomenon in this arty photograph project. All you lot need is a few glasses, a flashgun, a tripod and a black-and-white pattern impress. Only place the blueprint in the groundwork with the glasses in forepart. Fill up them with unlike levels of water and move the pattern backwards or forwards to fine-tune the effect.
18. Kitchen close-ups
Your kitchen is an ideal location for shooting a macro project. Its reflective surfaces can be used to create interesting backgrounds for your shots, and a shallow depth of field tin can transform the most mundane of objects y'all'll find there. Creating a triptych of images can effect in a piece of fantastic wall fine art for your kitchen too, although it's important to recollect about how they're going to work together before you start shooting. Hither, three objects - a fork, a bowl of cereal and coffee granules - were all shot from a similar angle, with the impression of peak linking the sequence.
xix. Invert the earth with a crystal ball
Shoot through a crystal brawl and, while you lot won't see into the future, you will capture an inverted version of the scene behind the orb. But equally lite is refracted when it passes through the glass elements of a lens, the aforementioned thing happens with a drinking glass sphere. There are dedicated photography balls on the market, but the effect can often be achieved using a clear marble or even a paperweight. Zero suitable? A water-filled wine glass can besides work.
All sorts of subjects expect good through an orb, from sunsets and cityscapes to abstract items and even portraits. Endeavor shooting with a macro lens to fill the frame with the sphere, or with a wider bending to include some of the scene behind. To really play with perspectives, rotate the epitome with editing software so that the background is inverted but the scene in the orb is the correct mode up. You can as well incorporate elements that support the brawl into the image, such as hands, bowls or miscellaneous objects.
xx. All the same-life bokeh
Something as simple as a crumpled piece of foil can be the basis for a artistic photo project. Position a still-life subject on a sheet of glass with a piece of dark material underneath it. Scrunch up the kitchen foil then shine information technology back out and place it in the background. Shine a table lamp or torch on the foil and, with a tripod mounted camera, dial in the lens'south widest aperture to create some cute 'bokeh'. During the exposure, shine a flashlight onto the subject.
21. Play with shadows
Photography is fundamentally about capturing light, which is exactly why shadows can be so powerful. They can create dissimilarity with lighter parts of a composition or add together texture to an otherwise plain subject. They tin can fifty-fifty be manipulated to tell a story. Incorporating shadows into your images will claiming you to retrieve not merely about the objects within a scene, but how things outside of the frame tin touch the light that falls within it.
To play with shadows, all you demand is a calorie-free source and a solid object to block information technology. This could exist something natural, such as the shadow of a tree cast by sunlight. Equally, it could exist something man-made, such as the outline of a street sign created past a car'southward headlights. Or it could exist something you create yourself: effort playing puppet-chief by shining a torch and dancing your hand in front of it.
You can also invert this idea by shooting a bailiwick which is predominantly in shadow and experimenting with how splashes of lite fall upon it.
22. However life light trails
Light trails can be used in all kinds of photography, simply they're perfect for a artistic still life project. You tin can utilize a regular Maglite torch, simply try removing the end to reveal the seedling and make the lite more direct. Apply some electrical record to adhere a coloured sweet wrapper, which you tin utilize equally a makeshift 'gel'. Set the canera'due south shutter speed to around 30 secs with an aperture of around f/eight, then beginning moving the torch within the frame before pressing the shutter. Keep the movement throughout the exposure. Hither, we suspended the torch from a piece of string and fabricated a gentle circular motion to create a screw around the bottle.
23. Light spirals
You'll demand to attach a torch, suspended by string, to an open surface area of ceiling. Fit the widest lens you have on your camera, and mount it on a tripod pointing directly up. With the low-cal turned on, autofocus on the tip of the torch and set the lens to manual focus to lock the setting in. With an aperture of f/11 or f/16 dialled in, use Bulb manner and a remote release to go along the shutter open for a infinitesimal or so as you lot send the torch spinning in the dark…
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Formerly News Editor at Stuff, Chris has rarely been able to resist the bite of the travel bug – so he now writes most tech from the road, in whichever Wi-Fi-equipped café he can find. Fond of coffee kit, archetype cars and sustainable gear, if there'south one thing Chris loves more than scribbling, shooting and sharing his way effectually the earth, it'southward alliterative triplets.
Source: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/52-photography-projects-a-great-technique-to-try-every-week-of-the-year
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