Out of ideas?… Try these revolutionary photography techniques.

Hi dear photographer, you are frustrated?... First of all, you've bought the material, the tools, you learned the skills, and, in general, you spent a lot of money on the equipment, but… Anything of that doesn't have any value if you don’t have an idea (a good one)… Because in the last post I said that: the important thing in artistic photography is telling stories beyond every photo. If you want to grow up as a photographer here, I have some interesting ideas that you can try in: your own home, street, city park, forest… etc.

First we need to talk about timelapse, yes, timelapse is technically a video, but you might know that photography is the base of video making. To do this we need to go to a beautiful place and think about the movement that we want to “record”. And after that, we go to the start place, we fix the cam to one point that can’t change and we take a photo and we make one step, next we repeat that and when we have a lot of photos. After that, we put them on a video editor and we set speed to 25 photos for a second. The results are incredible.

Stop motion: Well, the word “stop motion”, is well known for the people that want to make animations and don’t have an extended budget. But, first of all, stop motion is a technique that you can do incredible things, nowadays, stop motion is a technique that maked possible lots of movies: like, for example, the version of “pinocho” of Guillermo del Toro or Shay Shon. I know that this isn’t a blog about cinema and you aren't, possibly, a cinema director. But, secondly, you can make a stop motion in your own home and make your own “mini movie” made photo by photo. First, you need to write a screenplay, create a background, and create characters from anything. And when you do all those things you start to take photos and move a little bit the parts of the character. When you have all photos we make the same post production process that we naked before for the time lapse. Good look with your first movie!

After the cinema era started, people couldn't go to the cinema (for obvious reasons), and people went to theatres and, especially in China, some people started to play with the shadows to make figures and tell stories. In this part, I propose that you create a comic using only photos playing with the shadows in a white background. That exercise can upgrade your photo taking skills. Then, you need to edit the photo to put a text upon the image. And with exercise you can discover that you can do some insane photos playing with light and shadows.

Reflections & Mirror Photography

Using reflections can dramatically change the perspective and depth of a photograph. You can find reflections naturally in water, glass windows, or metallic surfaces, or you can create your own with mirrors. Here’s how to make the most of this technique:

Look for Unexpected Reflections: Puddles after rain, sunglasses, or even smartphone screens can provide interesting reflections that add depth to your shots.

Use Mirrors Creatively: A handheld mirror can help you create surreal effects by capturing multiple angles of the same subject in one frame.

Play with Symmetry: Reflections often create symmetry in your photos, which can lead to visually striking compositions.

In the fourth place, we need to talk about rotoscope technique. Yes, another video technique that we moved to the photography area in this post. But: what is a rotoscope? If you have seen the making off of an old Disney movie or the “Undone” television series, you might know this technique. Basically (for the photography part), we ned to take a good photo that you can do some insane photos playing with light and shadows.