Creative Photography Techniques

Photography is truly one of those hobbies where the sky’s the limit—or rather, your creativity. There’s so much more to this art form than point-and-shoot, and once you have the basics down, you can try countless exciting techniques to get unique shots.

12 Creative Photography Techniques

Here are the top 12 Creative Photography Techniques to inspire you! I hope it will help you to be creative in the photography industry.

Go out of focus

In photography, achieving sharpness at all times is usually a coveted skill. Being able to capture crucial moments in high quality is necessary, but for this technique, you will do quite the opposite. Taking a picture entirely out of focus can create an exciting result. If you love abstract photography, you will surely enjoy playing with light and color. Depending on the colors and your subject, you can achieve a variety of atmospheres: gloomy, melancholy, mysterious… Your subject remains enigmatic, with only an impression of its proper form.

Try tilt-shift

If making your entire photo blurry is not your cup of tea, you can try your hand at tilt-shift photography. This technique allows you to keep a limited area in focus while making the background and the foreground unfocused. It is a unique way to draw attention to your subject while keeping the overall composition rather abstract. Generally, special tilt-shift lenses are required for this technique. However, you can still try it before making such a significant investment. Free lensing can yield a similar result. Detach your lens and hold it at various angles to see how it works.

Leverage bokeh

Speaking of going out of focus, you could also try creating a bokeh. The beautiful bokeh effect is something we all love in our photos. It gives pictures a magical feel when it appears in the unfocused background. You can also deliberate in your actions and intentionally create bokeh in various ways. This is great if you are aiming to take atmospheric photos. For instance, Christmastime photos can be significantly enhanced with the lovely bokeh of fairy lights. Still, you can create an entirely different atmosphere in your city light photography using bokeh.

Embellish your view

A technique you can apply more widely throughout your photography would be adding interesting light effects to your pictures. This works exceptionally well with portrait photography, but it needs just a little extra to make the result more interesting. You can “embellish” your view in countless ways, and some of them are more advanced techniques than others. Spraying some water on your lens is an easy way to produce a magical effect. The water droplets will break the light to make the result fantastic. However, it would be best to be careful when water and your camera occur in the same sentence. You can also achieve exciting results by framing your lens with objects such as plastic. Experiment around to find your favorites.

The power of prisms

Another relatively easy way to create flares and add that little extra to your photographs is to use a prism. The number of effects you can achieve with different prisms is truly astounding, so if you’ve always been a fan of those colorful flares or abstract, dreamy compositions, you should try this.

Luckily, you can quickly get prisms, which won’t break the bank. Special hand-held fractal filters designed for photographers make this technique accessible. You’ll be able to add rainbows to your photographs without post-processing!

Take a panorama

Panorama shots are hardly new. However, this is still a technique worth practicing, as sometimes, nothing can compare to the expansive view taken in by a panorama. If you often go hiking or are a fan of nature photography, there will be no better way to capture breathtaking views than by panning along with them. Taking a panorama shot is not as easy as it sounds.

Creative Photography Techniques

Horizontal panning takes some practice. For the best result, you need to hold your camera still, not move, and pan steadily. However, horizontal panoramas are not the only way to capture more than a single image can encompass.

New angles

Other than a horizontal panorama, another technique that might be useful in certain situations is a vertorama or vertical panorama. Again, learning the art of vertical panning might take some practice, but in beautiful places where the intricate details of the ceiling must be included in the picture, this technique will be helpful. But what if neither horizontal nor vertical panoramas can contain everything you want in your shot? You go for a 360-degree “stereographic projection”, of course! While these photos lean more towards the artistic side of photography, you can achieve unique results with the right subject. All you’ll need to do is learn some photo editing skills.

Put on your macro lens.

Looking at things from a distance is fine, but sometimes, you can discover truly interesting subjects while examining the world up close. Macro photography offers many opportunities for creativity, so put on your macro lens (or purchase one) and start exploring your surroundings. Nature is an excellent subject in this case. Even water droplets of the morning dew can yield breathtaking shots if you get the lighting right.

You can also zoom in on insects to see them in a completely new light. If you zoom in close enough, you will also discover patterns in nature that can be great for abstract photography. Don’t miss out on taking colorful photos of flowers or shooting snowflakes the next time it’s snowing.

Move your camera

A photographer needs a steady hand for most photography techniques. However, a moving camera can sometimes produce a more interesting result than a steady one. With the panning technique, you can create a lot of action and movement in photos. When taking a picture of a moving object, you can emphasize its speed by panning along with its movement as you press the shutter button. The shutter speed needs to be pretty long to make the effect more eye-catching. Try this technique on moving cars or animals and see if you like it.

Moreover, panning horizontally is not the only way to add motion blur to your photos. You can also try the zoom burst technique. This is an easy way to achieve a dramatic effect: all you need to do is zoom in on your subject while taking the photo with a long shutter speed. Experiment with different settings to find the right one.

Go black and white

While for some people, colors are a signature to their photos, and they cannot imagine their photography without them, there is no doubt that black and white photography has immense potential in visual storytelling. Getting into black and white photography requires you to start looking at things differently; instead of color, you need to focus on shapes and tones as they will define your picture.

Black & White Photography

That is why you must be on the lookout for an appropriate amount of contrast and optimal light conditions. This takes some practice since colors usually naturally grab our attention. However, once you get the hang of it, your black-and-white photos will be just as interesting as your color ones, or even more so. You can see that even simple portraits can look very imposing when taken in black and white if you look at professional corporate headshots.

Use long exposure

You have probably heard of long exposure shots and perhaps even tried this technique. We have already mentioned motion blur as well. But capturing the light trails of traffic when photographing cityscapes is not all. There is too long exposure. Playing around with these settings on your camera opens up a world of possibilities. A long exposure can come in handy when you’re shooting nature photographs.

The smooth effect on water that this technique can achieve ultimately changes the atmosphere of scenic landscape photos. A long exposure also allows you to capture people in a different way than you would normally. Place your camera in a fixed position while your subject changes position during the exposure, and you can tell a narrative in a single photo. A long exposure also lets you easily capture natural phenomena such as star trails. This is one of those techniques you can even try at home, and the results can be stunning.

Get creative with mixed media.

Finally, if conventions never really held you back, you might find trying mixed media photography techniques quite liberating. Your artistic process does not need to end once you’ve pressed the shutter button. Post-processing is one thing – you can do amazing things using photo editing software, but you can take your photography pieces to the next level once they are developed (or rather, printed). You can paint on them to add a new layer of interest. You can also layer things on top of them and re-photograph them. Artistic freedom is yours.

Conclusions

Combine these techniques with your creative ideas, and you can create unique photographs that are works of art. Even if you’re only a hobbyist, trying these techniques is fun and rewarding, so don’t hesitate.