Give your summer photography a kick
Now is the perfect time to get snapping, but you could do better
Summer is one of the most fun seasons of the year. The holidays, festivities, outdoors weather and extra hours of light are an inspiring combination for anyone with a camera or smartphone. Here are some quick tips to kick start your summer photography:
Shoot what you love. It doesn’t matter if you order massive prints to decorate the walls of your house or simply post to your favourite online social site, you are immersed and attentive, stimulated and inspired when you photograph subjects you’re most passionate about. Try photographing a cause that makes you angry; the child that makes your heart swell with pride, or the goldfish whose gulping antics make you giggle. When you connect with your subject you create photographs that your audience will connect with too.
Switch up your perspective. We see the world from eye level
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and it’s easy to shoot from a standing position. If you want to create an image that is unique and stands out try changing your perspective. Get down on your stomach, climb a ladder, jump in a kayak, shimmy up a tree – find a new angle to photograph from. Aerial photography from dronemounted cameras has soared in popularity because it has opened us up to the eagle’s eye view of our planet. Now we can see familiar scenes from new angles. Change your perspective and show us our world in a new way.
Just add water. All life depends on water so it is an atmospheric element that we’re drawn to. Look for ways to work water into your photos. Experiment with shooting the kids under the sprinkler in the backyard, bodyboarding at the beach, fossicking in tidal rock pools or snorkelling in a marine reserve. Splashproof cameras and waterproof housings are readily
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available. A word of caution, remember that water will always find a way and doesn’t mix well with electronics. It pays to test a manufacturer’s waterproof claim before you chuck your camera in the sea.
Photograph close to home. That once in a lifetime tropical snorkelling adventure isn’t the best place to learn how to use a
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new camera. You want to be ready to start snapping away not working out what all the buttons do. Photographing what you love about your neighbourhood is a great place to start.
Here’s a summer photo challenge for you – you have to capture the essence of your neighbourhood in five photos for a foreign friend. What would you photograph? To harvest ideas about what’s so great about your neighbourhood make a post on Neighbourly.co.nz. What are your neighbourhood icons? Get creative, think people, places, events, moments, emotions, colours, light. Look for different ways to capture these and encourage your neighbours to do the same.
Summer should be fun and so should your photography. Don’t spend the season with your camera glued to your eye socket. Do make time to enjoy life, and have your camera at the ready to immortalise some of those magic moments.