Take time, look and really see what is around you.
If you have access to a phone with a camera here are some photography tips from Michelle the Arts Officer in Crosscare Youth Services Dún Laoghaire. These will help you pause, take time and capture all that surrounds you.
Sunsets
Find out when the sun will set and get there at least half an hour beforehand. It is often the lead up to, and the time after the sun disappears that the real magic happens.
Keep an eye on the weather also. There are a variety of different type of sunsets that produce a range of different types of lights and patterns in the sky. Don’t just go for the clear days.
Look around you, the wonderful thing about sunsets is that they not only create wonderful colours in the sky, but they also cast beautiful golden light. As the sunset progresses keep an eye out for other shots around you. You might find a great opportunity for portrait, landscape, close up etc. behind you in the golden light.
Colour
This image was taken from work a Youth Group did exploring beach art, making art from the everything on the shoreline.
Colour has an emotional value. Colour is everywhere, we are surrounded by it and can’t avoid it and therefore we tend to take it for granted when we take photos. The key to a good photo is not taking colour for granted, you should really pay attention to it and how it affects your images.
You can use one colour against a neutral background. Use strong bold colours, or subtle soft pastel colours. Take a photo of something blue, brown, yellow, pink or orange. You could think of letting one colour dominate. Play around with colours.
Reflections
Once you start looking for them, you will be surprised to discover that they are all around us and so incredibly beautiful.
First step is easy- find a reflective surface. Some of the most beautiful reflections are found on the surface of water. Any bodies of water including puddles are perfect for reflection photography.
You can find reflection on any glass surfaces, shiny cars, wet tarmac, on ice, even your own sunglasses.
The Golden Hour
The right light can make a single photo stop you in your tracks. Take time, and imagine a warm, natural glow that makes everyone and everything look their best.
That’s the magic of the ‘golden hour’ of photography. The golden hour of photography starts roughly one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset.
Flowers
Try to crop out distracting details in the background and make those compositions tighter. Don’t be afraid of zooming in to get a close up of your subject. Cloudy days are perfect for flower photography because it creates an even light with few shadows, so this is a great time to work on flowers.
Avoid windy days! Windy days are very difficult to capture details of flowers and it’s best to avoid taking pictures on these days unless you are going for a different effect on your photography. Photographing flowers from above, underneath, behind, backlit, or any other interesting angles will create an unusual photo.
This is a great way to experiment, to train our eye to see things differently, to see things differently with your photography.
These are some images captured by the young people and youth workers in the Youth Services.
