Creative Photography Ideas
Creative photography ideas with stained glass at La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires.
Creative photography can enable you to make more visually dynamic and emotively powerful photos?
Throughout this extensive post I’II be demonstrating how you’ll be able to incorporate the following creative photography concepts and techniques into the way you make photos.
Reflection
Bokeh
Selective Focus
Blurred Photos
Panning
High Key
HDR Photography
Macro
Viewpoint
Frame within a frame
Shadows
Juxtaposition
Candid photos
Photo Essay
Pattern and repetition
Local color
Overlay textures
Montage
Multiply exposure
Freezing action
Creative blur
Zooming during long exposures
Abstraction
These techniques are powerful and will help you expand your creativity and explore the art of photography in fun and inventive ways.
I’m sure I could wax on lyrically about the nature of creativity and what separates an artist from a professional or enthusiast photographer.
In reality the demarcation between these three groups is often somewhat blurred. What matters is not what you call yourself, but the quality and communicative power of the photos you create.
There’s all manner of accessible and easy to implement photo techniques that will enable you to explore your creativity. Many of them are camera based and are enhanced by a more physical approach to making photos.
A whole new world of opportunities for creative expression will open to you simply by doing the following:
Changing your camera to subject distance
Moving around the subject
Photographing from a more extreme viewpoint
Reflection Reveals The World At a Deeper Level
The photo at the top of this post features the spectacular La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The image was constructed very much with the use of reflections formed on glass.
Despite being really ill the day I visited La Recoleta I had a fantastic time exploring the cemetery and made lots of interesting photos, many of which are quite surreal.
If you look at the photo it’s composed of several different elements, basically divided down the middle of the image.
The representation of the Madonna exists on a stained glass window, which is reflecting foliage from behind me. It’s an interesting alternative for how to undertake creative photography with mirrors.
In certain areas the glass is somewhat transparent. This allows for a view of some of the buildings outside the cemetery to come through, albeit in a slightly distorted way, and appear as part of a composite image on the stained glass window.
The photo was made by using windows, both in front and behind the camera, on the outside of tombs in the La Recoleta Cemetery.
Put simply the photo is a kind of composite containing the following:
Stained glass window
Fragments of the world behind that window
Images from what’s behind me reflected onto the stained glass window I’m photographing
To make the photo I positioned myself really close to the stained glass window and moved, left and right and up and down, until I was able to achieve a good composition with a desirable reflection.
It seemed critical that both the image of the Madonna and the image of the apartments be part of the final composition.
I’m sure you’ll agree that the photo above, which I call Tears For The Lost, is a fairly abstract image.
What I can assure you is that there’s no Photoshop hocus pocus going on. What’s more any smoke and mirrors used to create the photo has been achieved completely in camera.
Does that make the image more authentic than if it was a digital composite created from individual images assembled together on a computer?
A lot of folks would say yes. For my part I’m happy to call it a photo, which I’d separate out from (say) digital photo illustration. Both have merit and both require skill and vision to create.
I employ, teach and promote the use of photo enhancement applications like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. They’re a major part of my own digital imaging workflow, even when I’m dealing with images from my archive originally made on film.
I guess the point is that many consumers attach extra value to images that, as much as possible, have been made in camera.
About to Travel?
What Is Creative Photography?
Creative photography is a very common term which, quite often, is associated with amateur photographers.
Back in the day when how to photography books were all the rage they were all manner of titles that included the term creative photography.
The problem is that so many of those books, not to mention the online posts that have followed, just don't examine the nature of creativity all that deeply.
We can look at creativity in a variety of ways. How you use your camera is particularly important and having a good understanding of how to use shutter speed, aperture and iso to control the look of your photo is of critical importance.
Your choice of lens and the way you use that lens has a lot to do with the creativity of your photos. Clearly a macro lens allows you to see and record the world in a totally different way compared to a more general purpose lens.
Likewise, Polarizing filters and Neutral Density filters are great devices to control the look and feel of the images you're creating.
Of course these days there's an enormous amount of emphasis placed upon discovering your true, artistic self through image enhancement applications like Abobe Photoshop.
While it’s correct to consider applications like Photoshop as powerful creative tools I'm of the belief that, for most folks, too much emphasis on image manipulation on the desktop is akin to putting the cart before the horse.
True creativity comes through a unique vision and a purpose driven approach to your photography.
To this end it's important to identify why you love photography and the specific things you want your photos to document, explore or suggest. Here's a few examples:
Love
Family
Community
The natural world
Empathy
Religious tolerance
A more inclusive society
The beauty of our world and its people
The beauty of your own town or state
Understanding why it is you want to make photos will not only inform what it is you photograph, but also how you should go about doing it.
This process will enable you to better understand your own true motivations and purpose in life and help you to develop a unique vision for the photos you make.
What Does It Take To Be Creative?
A willingness to experiment is at the heart of creative photography?
Being restrained by conventions or rules may allow you to produce technically proficient images. But it’s through taking risks and embracing new and more abstract viewpoints that your photography will rise to the next level.
Photography is a communicative medium and photos are at their post powerful when they elicit an emotive response from the viewer.
By embracing a more creative approach to image making you’ll be amazed at how much more emotionally charged your photos will become.
Candle and a background displaying bokeh at Berliner Dom in Berlin, Germany.
Bokeh Effect in Photography
Have you heard about the bokeh effect in photography.
The word bokeh has become part of the vocabulary of photography and refers to the aesthetic quality, in particular the shape, of out of focus points of light in an image.
The idea of getting a lovely, bokeh filled background was certainly in my mind when photographing this solitary candle at the Berliner Dom (i.e., Berlin Cathedral) in Berlin, Germany.
The word bokeh derives from the Japanese word boke, which translates as blur or haze; and also from the word bokeh-aji which describes the quality of the blur in question.
An image with beautiful bokeh will feature out of focus points of light that display a smooth, circular edge.
Bokeh has become a very fashionable look or treatment that a lot of photographers strive to realize in the photos they create.
Visually attractive and pleasing bokeh encourages the eye to these abstract, circular out of focus areas.
Here's how you can create images that display beautiful bokeh.
Ensure your image includes bright, highlight areas and round points of light.
Employ a fast lens and use it at its maximum aperture of f/2.8 or brighter.
Critically focus on your primary subject. Close up portraits, still life subjects and macro photography is generally well suited to this endeavor.
Use a shallow depth of field to blur the out of focus points of light in the image.
Where possible opt for a more powerful focal length (e.g., zoom in), as it will create more pronounced bokeh.
Another great way to enhance any bokeh that might already be present in the image is to change the relative distance between the camera and the subject compared to the distance between the subject and the background. Here’s how to do just that.
Move closer to your primary subject.
Move the primary subject, at which the lens will be focused, further away from the background.
Selective Focus
A great technique that helps direct the viewers gaze Selective Focus requires critical focusing and a shallow depth of field to isolate the most important focal point from nearby competing elements within the frame.
It’s a great technique to use when photography flowers, food and close-up subject matter.
I’ve written a relatively short post which will tell you everything you need to know about Selective Focus and other related techniques.
It’s titled Selective Focus and Depth Of Field.
Blurred photo of four young friends on the beach at Seaspray, Australia.
The Beauty Of Blurred Photos
It’s amazing how you can add creativity to your photography through well made blurred photos.
That’s not to say that all your blurred photos should suddenly be considered masterpieces, but a placing either part or all of your image out of focus does tend to produce a painterly effect.
The more blurred the picture the more impressionistic the result.
These lots of ways to experiment with blurred photos. Here’s a few to get you going.
Switch your lens to manual focus and turn the focus ring on the lens until your get the desired about of blur.
About half way into a relatively slow shutter speed (e.g., ⅛ second or longer) try zooming, defocusing or moving towards your subject.
Blurred photos are a great way to hide identity and introduce mystery into your images. That’s exactly what I did when photographing four young friends on a beach in Seaspray, Australia.
Because they’re so out of focus it makes it easier for the viewer to imagine themselves or the ones they love in the same image.
I hope you’ll try to blur some photos in camera yourself. The great thing about digital cameras is that, once you’ve bought them, there’s really no cost and, therefore, no excuse for not experimenting.
Blurred photo using panning of a girl swinging on a Tarzan rope.
Exploring Movement Through Panning
There’s an associate technique called panning which is based around photographing a moving subject during a relatively slow exposure time.
Follow the moving subject with your camera, release the shutter and continue to move or pan the camera in a smooth, fluid motion until after the exposure has finished.
The continued movement I speak of should help minimize the occurrence of an abrupt, jarring look.
Panning requires practice and you’ll most likely need a shutter speed of ⅛ second or slower as you need time to actually move the camera after its shutter has been released.
Ultimately there are three factors at play when panning.
The camera’s shutter speed
The speed at which your subject is moving
The speed at which you move your camera
This image of a young girl swinging on a Tarzan rope was made on 35 mm transparency (i.e., slide) film back in, I think, 2000.
While the young girl is blurred she remains more clearly defined, compared to her surroundings, because by panning I’ve kept the camera moving, relatively speaking, at the same speed she is.
An abstract high key image featuring penguins on Curverville Island, Antarctica.
High Key Photography
High Key photos are simply photos where the majority of the image consists of tones that can be classified as mid tone or brighter.
While not compulsory it’s okay to include a jet black in a high key image, as most photos need a black to bring out shape and enhance color.
The trick, as you see in this image of penguins on Cuverville Island in Antarctica, is that most of the photo needs to consist of areas that are considered mid or brighter (e.g., highlights) in tone.
High Key photos often display a light and airy feel. It’s a great technique if you want to create ethereal looking pictures.
HDR Photography
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography has become incredibly popular over the last ten or so years. However, I suspect advancements in camera sensors and post processing applications may have resulted in a lot of photographers abandoning this particular workflow.
But I still use it, when the dynamic range or contrast of the scene is beyond that which my camera’s sensor can record.
But not only does HDR allow you to record more shadow detail and subtle highlight texture than you might otherwise be able to, it also creates a large composite image with far more detail than you’d otherwise obtain from a single image.
Unfortunately the internet became awash with overly post processed HDR images which probably turned a lot of people off this really powerful technique.
I really never thought of HDR as a creative technique, though with extreme processing all manner of wacky looks and treatments can be realized.
For me High Dynamic Range photography is simply an important part of my workflow which I apply when and if I need to.
Move Yourself And/Or Move The Subject
Photography is a physical endeavor.
So long as you’re moving you’re on the right track to making visually interesting images.
As you move around the subject the relationship it has with its surroundings changes.
The subject’s relationship with the environment in which they’re depicted and the way they’re lit can have a huge impact on the success of your photo.
There’s a number of things that might change as you move around the subject, including the following:
The direction of the light
The angle at which the photo is made and, as a consequence, the power of the subject, both in itself and also in relation to other elements within the frame.
The more physical your approach the more likely you’ll be rewarded with visually interesting images.
What Story Do You Want To Tell?
We limit our ability to tell a story by always bringing the camera up to our eye (e.g., 5 foot 3 inches above the ground).
Frankly, we’re often be better off bringing our eye up or down to where the camera needs to be to produce the desired result.
A dynamic view of a statue at La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentiina.
Get Up And Get Back Down Again
Consider photographing your subject from either a low or high angle of view.
A lower angle of view will help depict a stand of trees with the reverence and awe in which a child might view them.
Conversely, photographing down onto a subject (e.g., child or animal) can portray them as cute or vulnerable.
Take a look at this black and white photo of a statue. As you can see I made the image from a low viewpoint to monumentalise the subject depicted.
Consider just how powerful I’ve been able to make the statue of the angel by photographing from a worms eye angle of view.
Notice how attention is drawn up to the statue’s gaze.
By focusing carefully on the eye of the statue and employing a very shallow Depth Of Field it’s easier for our gaze to move beyond the statue’s outstretched and out of focus hand and up to its face.
A colorful detail of a candelabra inside a crypt at La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Abstraction Leads To More Creative Photography
Great Photos Do More Than Record Reality
Artist’s often have an interesting relationship to reality. Here’s what I mean
There’s the reality in which we find ourselves.
There’s how we respond to the particular moment, event or situation.
And there’s how we choose to represent that reality in the art we produce.
The whole notion of photography being an accurate representation of the world around us was always a flawed premise.
Being alone in a forest could be a frightening experience for one person and a liberating and/or deeply spiritual experience for another.
The undeniable fact is that both individuals were present in the same forest.
But it’s their perception of that forest that determines their experience and, as a result, what they determine the reality of that place to be.
Understanding this concept can help free you from the fear that exploring a more creative approach to your photography will remove the scene or subject in question from reality.
In fact that’s the very purpose of art and the creative process.
Don't agree. Fine! Stop using wide-angle and telephoto focal lengths; polarizing filters and all manner of software applications.
What’s more you’d be better off putting you camera down, whether it be digital or film based, because photography clearly is not for you.
But I know that’s not who you are. Right?
Time To Get On With Your Own Creative Journey
If you’re interested in what you’ve seen and read here I’d invite you to explore more of my photos from this series in my Argentina Photography Collection.
It includes other photos from my visit to La Recoleta Cemetery as well as records of my adventures in the La Boca and San Telmo precincts of Buenos Aires.
In fact keep an eye on that collection as, over the next few weeks, it will more than double in size.
A dramatic black and white image of an angel and sky at La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Inspiration And Information, For The Road Ahead
To further your understanding of the creative process I strongly recommend my Photographing Cemeteries eBook.
At under $10 it’s an amazing resource.
Several years in the making this beautifully designed ebook showcases photos from the following places:
Australia
India
France
Russia
Austria
Greenland
Iceland
South Georgia Island (including Ernest Shackleton’s grave)
Argentina
In addition to stunning photography the ebook also contains a range of short essays covering the creative and technical decisions that underpin the making of these images.
While the book is richly illustrated with photography from cemeteries from around the world, it’s ultimately a guide to the creative process designed to help you find your own path in life.
That's right, I wrote it for you as much as I did for me.
There may be more interesting, diverse and informative photography eBooks out there. But I’ve yet to find one.
Why don’t you have a look and decide for yourself.
