Creative Photo Ideas for Spring 2015

Here are some awesome creative photo ideas for you to try along with the necessary tips to achieve the looks and style in these photos. These are very useful for both professional photographers and amateur ones who want to have a little fun with some beautiful shots.

Shoot a daring fashion photo

Creative Photo Ideas

Seeing how winter is coming to an end, why not try to lift up everybody’s spirits by shooting a very vibrant and colorful image. This is a great technique used by Dan Comaniciu, a fashion photographer.

He says that you don’t have to make your model wear very brightly colored clothes or use a colorful backdrop, as it is quite easy to edit the whole picture in Photoshop.

Tips

Even though it’s very easy to edit the photos‘ colors in Photoshop, it helps to have the right lighting when taking the picture. The photographer used two Hensel lights along with strip soft boxes on the sides of his subject, at around 90 degree angles. This gives the subject a very special almost sculptural feel.

It’s very important to light your backdrop uniformly. Comaniciu made use of two flash lights, shot with the same levels through his soft boxes, pointed at the backdrop.

Creative Photo Ideas – Shoot Macro Photos

Creative Photo Ideas

Explore the miniature world that surrounds you. Macro photography lets you be creative and capture very beautiful images without leaving the comfort of your home.

There are a lot of subjects you can shoot by using macro photography. You may choose to go more traditional and shoot nature and flowers, or you may wish to use more abstract angles and shoot a regular object such as a spoon. Shooting water drops hitting a surface seems to work pretty well too.

There are some rules you must follow when shooting macro photography, though. To capture a great image you will need a macro lens with a ratio aspect of 1:1. However, if you don’t own something like this, you can improvise and connect an extension tube to whatever standard lens you have.

The aperture setting is one of the most important aspects when it comes to macro photography.

Because of the very close proximity in which you take your shot, the depth of field looks to be very low, even when you close the aperture.

A great technique used in macro photography is to take more shots with different exposures and different focus points and edit them all together to form a single sharp image.

Tips for the Creative Photo Ideas

You will need a tripod because you will be forced to shoot using a very narrow aperture setting.

You might want to use an additional light to make your subject look great. LED panels are a very easy and fast solution.

To end up with very sharp images make use of the Liveview feature and switch the setting of focus to manual. Make sure your focal point is very sharp before taking the shot.

Shoot people on the go

Creative Photo Ideas

Taking digital photography shots of random people on the street may seem a little challenging, but busy centers are filled with great opportunities to shoot great images of people on the go.

Photographer Adam Hinton made a trip to Tokyo to work on a personal project.

He said that his initial intention was to photograph people on the streets of Tokyo on their way to work. He wanted to make a purely esthetic project with no social commentary whatsoever. However, Adam did say after starting the project that people who are on their way to work often look focused, serious and very tired.

He shot the images by standing in the center of the busiest street in Tokyo in the morning rush. He took shots of every person who walked through a beam of light that he spotted in the crowd.

Tips

The photographer advises everyone not to be gimmicky in their approaches. You should avoid signs or humor and look at the subject aesthetically to understand what statement you’re making.

Don’t carry a lot of things with you as you will want to stay very light when shooting in a large crowd.

Shoot your local wildlife

Creative Photo Ideas

You don’t have to travel to Africa to get great shots of wildlife and Jamie Hall proves this with his amazing photographs.

He said he wanted to shoot deer in an urban location to stand out of the crowd and he went in different parks and woods in cities where deer usually were hiding. The photographer said that you must study their movements as they are creatures of habit. After studying them you will be able to predict where the animals will go.

He said that even though deer are going in urban environments they’re still very nervy animals and you won’t be able to get too close to them. You must really be aware of the creature’s habits to get great shots of the animal.

Tips

Do some research in order to find out where your local wildlife can be found.

Jamie said that in most shots he used shutter speeds of 1/30 seconds to 3 seconds. This means that you will have to take shots of the animal while it’s standing perfectly still.

Shoot a creative abstract

Creative Photo Ideas

You won’t have to travel very far to find some amazing shapes, patterns and textures in man-made environments and natural ones.

Mark Mason shoots what he refers to as threatened things, temporary things and hopelessly out of the way objects.

He explains that the textures, colors and shapes of an object are vessels such as words in a poem that helps him explain what he feels at the moment he’s taking the shot.

The image is shot in an auto graveyard close to Route 66. He chose not to photograph the rusty cars and instead captured fascinating textures and patterns in the metal of those cars.

Tips

For the image, he used a Canon EOS-3 with 135mm f/2 lens.

He doesn’t recall the exposure he used but says he mounted the camera on a tripod so most likely he used f/5.6 because that metal was flat.

It’s very important to have great lighting when taking the shot. Mark says he was standing in the shadow of a trailer but the dirt on the metal reflected the light coming from the sun evenly.

So there you have it. This was our list of some creative photo ideas for you to try this March.

Images source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Who Really Owns Your Photos On Social Sites?

Like most people, you probably don’t think twice about it.

You head over to the newest social site, sign up for an account, check the “terms of service” box without really reading it, and begin posting. Content, photo videos – it all goes up without much thought as to the true impact.

But what rights do you have to your content, photos and videos after you put them on a social site? What rights do you have to it after the fact? And more importantly, what rights do they have?

Almost every photo-sharing site has some type of license agreement to your content. While the agreements change from site to site, what you are agreeing to can change significantly. Here’s an overview of 12 major photo-sharing sites:

But even after you sign up with an account and start using it, things can change. For instance, on June 1st, Twitter announced the company was partnering with Photobucket to make sharing photos easier. Which means if you have a Twitter account and post photographs using the new API, you’ll also be subscribing to Photobucket’s terms of services by default.

Therein lies the problem.

It’s fun to use social sites, and most of us don’t think twice about signing up for an account. In fact, in many cases the benefits far outweigh the detriments.  Who wouldn’t want the possibility of reaching out to millions of people that spend hours on a site every single month?

Yet problems do exist, and will continue to grow as we spend even more time online. Whether you are trying to avoid your high school senior using a photo posted on Facebook for other uses, or you are trying to gain compensation to a photo you tweeted on a monumental event, its important to think before you post.

3 Rules Of Advice For Photographers

Think Before You Post
I often tell people to think before they write up a quick post and place it into their newsfeed. Would you want your mom reading it? Your grandmother? Just a few seconds of contemplation can save you years of embarrassment – as Senator Weiner can now tell you.

The same applies to your photos. You may love the image you just captured. But before you tweet it and share it, what are the implications? What are your goals for the photograph? In some cases, putting the image on hold for a few hours or even days can save you in the future.

Where Will Your Compensation Come From?
Instead of thinking about it on the fly, sit down and come up with your own policies on posting photographs.

If you hope to be compensated for your work now or in the future, make sure you are fully covered before you post. Include it in a package price for your clients. Take the necessary steps to copyright it. Or use a watermark to protect the integrity of the image.

If you’re using it as promotion, post it to showcase what you do. Always make sure the image leads back to you, and you keep up to date on your profile. Also realize that as much protection as you use, there is always the possibility of your photos being reused without your permission and without your credit. It’s a new fact of the social atmosphere.

What Is Your Ultimate Goal?
What is your ultimate goal for posting a photograph? Are you using it to capture a new audience to your work? Are you using it to try and gain sales? Are you using it for marketing and exposure?

Know your goals ahead of time. It’s possible to use social successfully in a variety of ways. But your first task is to know how it will benefit you. Only then can you take the necessary steps to make sure you are protected.

4 Ways To Use The New Facebook

It seems like Facebook is always tweaking and making some kind of change. But recently Facebook made some changes that are particularly beneficial to small business owners. Let’s look at some of the newest features and how they can help you become more attuned to your followers, and reach out to them in a better way.

Who Do You Want To Be?

When you login to Facebook and travel around making comments, your comments are posted using your personal profile. All that has changed, as you can now tell Facebook who you want to be as you are making comments.

By visiting your “account” in the top right of your page you’ll see the option “Use Facebook as Page”. This allows you to visit other pages and write comments as your Page, or brand, not as your personal self. So any comments, photos or videos will come from your brand – making it easier than ever to stay active as your business, not as you personally.

Keep in mind that you do need to shift back and forth as you are posting, especially if you have different brands. Also, if you have more than one admin for a page, make sure they are also aware of shifting back and forth as they post. You don’t want to accidentally post the wrong message – remember who you are at all times!

A Change In Navigation

Remember the tabs at the top of your Page? No more. Now your page is set up very much like your profile, with the navigation falling to the left side of your screen under your logo/photo.

The new navigation makes it more user friendly, and makes your Page more accessible – much like you access your Profile. If you’ve been complaining about separating your personal from your business life, this will help you keep the two distinctly separate.

Control Your Likes

As a Page, or a brand, you probably have certain Pages that you connect up with, and like to showcase to your visitors within your Page. Now as an account admin, you have full control over what shows up under your navigation.

Remember, you can join other pages that have similarities, or you can create more than one page for your different brands and services. In either case, you as an admin have the final say over what is showcased on your Page.

Change Your Photos

Chances are you’ve seen the new photo layout on your Profile. While your Profile allows you full access to the layout, and allows you to be creative with the way it presents to your visitors, you still don’t have quite the leeway with your Page photos.

Even so, your photos are now front and center of your page. Don’t allow them to become stagnant, and make sure you are changing them often for a “new look” as your visitors come over to share and make comments. Follow Virtual Photography Studio on Facebook