Boredom Buster #2: Photography

Hi all,

Here is day two of our series Boredom Busters to help you find inspiration on what to do in this time of quarantine! Today, our focus will be around photography! As we all live our lives, we make memories that we store in our brains, but as we age, our ability to store these memories begins to slowly decline. Thus sometimes, it’s better to have a more permanent storage function, in pictures! And besides, we all know the saying a picture is worth a 1000 words. Here are some tips that we have when taking photos!

Tips for Photography

1. Find something you are interested in capturing - whether that is flowers or people or even random inanimate objects you have around the house

2. Make sure you have decent lighting, so that your pictures are clear. Taking photos during the “golden hour” is a good idea because the contrast and lighting is super good!

3. If you want to show motion and you have a digital camera, you can use a smaller shutter speed so that you can get a motion blur effect.

4. One really cool effect is long exposure, and if you’re in a dark setting and you use a lower shutter speed, you can move a light source around to get a cool shape or design. 

5. Try experimenting with perspective using your digital or iphone camera. If you set the camera really low, you can get a worm’s eye view, and if you set the camera higher, you can get a bird’s eye view. 

6. Use the rule of thirds!: by drawing two evenly spaced horizontal lines and two evenly spaced vertical lines and placing your focal point on one of the line intersections, you can create more aesthetic pictures

7. Try not to shake your hands when taking the picture - this may sound difficult but with good camera posture and the correct shutter speed or using additional equipment such as a tripod, it should help alleviate the problem (the shutter speed should be about 1/focal length to best reduce any noise)

8.  Use a polarizing filter to help reduce glare from metal and glass

9. Use simple backgrounds to draw the audience’s eyes to the focal point of the piece

10. Don’t use flash indoors, it can cause the the portrait to seem harsh and unnatural