5 Tips to Add Some FUN to Your Photography!
Photography is already seriously good fun, but we’ve come up with 5 really simple and creative ways you can add a little extra fun to your photos every now and then. Note, we don’t recommend you use these tricks with every photo you take, but it’s certainly ok to bust them out once in a while:
1. Tilt-shift.
This is a seriously neat photography trick that makes your photo look like a miniature city. Easiest way to achieve this effect is actually to do it in camera. If you’re camera is able, you’ll be able to find it as a “creative effect” of some description. Let us know if you’re keen and we can do up a quick tutorial on how to do this in Lightroom too. It’s fun!
2. HDR.
This stands for High Dynamic Range, and is where you capture an image at 3 or 5 different exposures and then stitch them together. This trick can often add a cartoony effect to your image, but you can take this as far as you’d like. To take an HDR, you’ll want to take exactly the same photo (and we mean EXACTLY THE SAME PHOTO) at 3 or 5 different exposure levels – so typically -1, 0 & +1 or -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2. Once you’ve imported these images into Lightroom, you will want to select the images, go into “Photo” and select “Photo Merge” – “HDR”. Then let Lightroom work it’s magic! From here – editing away just like your normally would.
On this photo of the Edmonton Legislature, we’ve created an HDR image with a more “cartoony” effect.
This is another HDR image. This image of the Calgary skyline in the evening is a more balanced HDR that doesn’t have the same cartoon effect.
3. Physiograms.
This is a super fun light-writing technique that is an extension of what we cover normally in our Night Photography course. To do this, take a flashlight and hang it from a piece of string in a very dark room. Set your camera on Manual Mode and set your ISO to 100, your Aperture to f16, and your shutter speed to 30 seconds. Place your camera with the lens facing up towards the light on the floor. Open your shutter and push the light so that it begins writing a light pattern on your camera. Let the light swing and sway until your shutter closes again. Be careful not to push your light too hard (or it will go out of your camera’s frame). Also try it with different light colours or multiple lights to see what neat effects you can create!
4. Presets.
Lightroom is great because you can very easily add any type of preset. There are thousands and thousands (and thousands) to choose from that will allow you to add almost any effect to your photo. Search Lightroom Presets on Google and discover the endless possibilities of what you can add to your photos!
5. Fisheye.
This is another really fun tool that you can experiment with. Only catch with this one is that it requires a special lens. Fisheye lenses are ultra wide angle lenses (so usually around 10mm or less) that create a really neat bulge effect. They can add a lot of fun to your photography – but please use them sparingly. Like all of these effects, you can definitely over-use them!
In the absence of us owning our own fisheye lens, we’ve decided to grab someone else’s… (Thanks Shutterstock!).
Have another neat effect, or want to see more of these in detail? Drop us an email or comment below! And don’t forget to explore more about our amazing photography courses in Calgary, Burlington, Oakville, Mississauga, Edmonton, Kelowna, Canmore & Ottawa!
