20 Ways to Experiment with Your Photography

Need some creative ideas to inject a little spice into your photography? Here’s 20 great ideas to get you started.

1. Play with bubbles (I use this cheap bubble machine and Bubble Mania liquid)

2. Shoot complete strangers; embark on your own 100 Strangers project

3. Stick coloured gels over your flashes to add vivid colour to your images

4. Do the exact opposite of what you normally do (landscape photographers: try portraits. Portrait shooters: get up at dawn and shoot nature)

5. Do something a little insane and take a photo to document it

6. Shoot sideways or upside-down and rotate the image in Photoshop to create interesting perspectives

7. Play with smoke (you can buy cheap smoke machines on ebay, use smoke bombs or throw talcum powder/chalk powder in the air)

8. Shoot straight into the sun (you may need to use a flash or reflector to stop your subject being too underexposed, or bring back shadow detail using Lightroom/Photoshop. Alternatively, you can choose to keep your subject in silhouette)

9. Constrain yourself to just ONE fixed lens and shoot with ONLY that lens for a week. (If your lens is a zoom lens, pick a particular zoom length and stick to it; don’t zoom in or out). Repeat next week with a different lens/zoom length

10. Macro photography (try shooting closeups of fresh fruit)

11. Macro water drops (Here’s a how to; and another)

12. Use talcum powder/chalk powder to create explosions. Position a flash behind your subject (facing towards the camera) and put a coloured gel over the flash (red works well). Your subject should be obscuring the flash. Between the flash and your subject, throw talcum powder/chalk so the flash will fire through the powder. You’ll have explosive and powerful results like these

13. Shoot with your mobile phone

14. Experiment with long exposure (try photographing busy roads at night, or stars in the sky)

15. Kinetic photography (do a long exposure and throw your camera in the air)

16. Get stuck into light painting

17. Build a pinhole camera

18. Try infrared photography

19. Play with interesting props. Thrift stores and garage sales are great places to find cheap props and clothes.

20. Play with Photoshop! This could be an entire list unto itself; there’s a whole world to be explored if you’ve never played with Photoshop. Grab a free trial and try out some Photoshop tutorials.

The above ideas are only the tip of the iceberg. Got your own handy tips for experimenting? Let’s build up a list of as many ideas as we can think of; leave a comment below.