Photography Catergories 1

Black & White

001 Portrait
Photograph your friends, family members, or yourself and try to bring out their/your best qualities.

TIPS:

Focus on the eyes!
Talk to your subject and get them to relax and seem natural. Shoot them while they are laughing, when they gesturing, or are deep in thought. A forced smile is just that, forced.
Play with backgrounds. Pick a background that make your subject pop. Keep it simple and avoid unwanted distractions. Try a single strong colour or texture.
Try different angles. Get up high or bring your subject down low to the ground. Try tilting your camera for a canted angle.
Change where they are looking. Try have them looking: at the camera, out of frame, or within the frame.
Add a prop. Try adding another element: books, blowing bubbles, sunglasses, flower, anything of interest.
Try different compositions. Use different variations on the rule of thirds. Break the rule of thirds. Center the subject, have half outside of the frame. Experiment with portrait and landscape format. Fill the frame or leave negative space.
Experiment with lighting. Although sunlight is best, try coloured light, light passing through other objects, block out light, strong light, soft light, direct, reflected, or warm/cool light. Flash can be used in lowlight or to fill shadows outdoors.

Further Learning:

By Austin Bender

By Alexa Burnett

By Celia Baciero

002 Detail Portrait

Photograph eyes, hands feet, in action, etc... Frame just a part of the body or face, not the whole. Be sure that part represents the subject.

TIPS:

Get in close but still have a focal point.
Use their hands. Capture your subject using their hands: working with tools, writing, drawing, playing etc...
Play with depth of field: Experiment with Bokeh. Try very shallow depth or get everything in focus.
Think about your subject and defines them: An artist's hands with a brush, hockey player tying their skates, or just their mouth showing their typical expression.
Try obscuring your model with an object to reveal only part of the subject.

By Miranda Spafford

By Kelly Laurie

By Ava Pylypiw

003 Emotion/Story

Capture an emotion or story in a single image.

TIPS:

To be a story you should be able to tell the what probably happened before the moment and what could have happened after. Beginning, middle, and end remember?
Take your camera with you. You never know when that special moment will pop up.
Anticipate the event. Shoot ahead of the event because if you try to press the shutter at the moment, it's already too late.
Have your camera settings ready. if you are shooting sports, be ready with the right shutter speed, ISO, etc...
Start wide then get in close. Show the bigger picture, then get closer and closer to the details/action.
Stage it. For this photo, if you can't find a real story, make your own. Script a little story in your head and pretend it is like a scene from a movie. You can have a lot of fun with this idea.
Be invisible. Don't let people know you are shooting to get them acting naturally. Creepy? Maybe, but people act differently when they know they are being shot.
Use the background for context. It tells a lot of the story.

Further Learning:

Photojournalism Tips

By Kyle Coutts

By Finn Westbury

By Quinn Swagor

004 Creatures

Photograph animals, pets, insects etc... Show something interesting about the creatures appearance, behaviours, or environment.

TIPS:

Start with your pets.
A telephoto lens will let you get close to wild or enclosed animals.
Go to the zoo. There is no better place for variety of interesting and exotic animals. Plus many of them have naturally lit environments.
Get down (or up) to their eye level.
Ensure the lighting is good, side light is preferred to exaggerate their texture.
Frame a detail: You don't always have to shoot the whole subject.
Wait for the creature to do something interesting.
Just like people, be sure you get the eyes in focus.

Further Learning:

By Connor Federoshyn

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