5 Fun Photography Ideas for Kids to Try this Summer _ Part 1

kids photography

5 Fun Photography Ideas for Kids to Try this Summer _ Part 1

Summer is a great time for kids to play and experiment with their cameras!    This is the first in a series of posts that will give you fun ideas for the young photographers in your life to try.   Whether you pick just a few throughout the summer or challenge your kids to do each one, this is an inspiring activity that will keep kids’ creative minds churning and their bodies moving.

Extra Note:   Don’t let you kids have all the fun — you can join in for lots of these activities too!

1.  Choose Your Own Summer Field Trip

School’s out but that definitely doesn’t mean you can’t go on a field trip!  In fact, you can choose your own and don’t have to go where the teachers tell you!  Although maybe Mom or Dad may have a say.   Where will you choose?!?

  • Farmer’s market
  • Pick produce at a local farm
  • Visit a fire station
  • Farm  (pic of Webb’s horses)
  • Historical park
  • Amusement park
  • Art studio or museum
  • Library
  • Zoo
  • A river or or beach nature centre
  • Picking wildflowers
  • Hoodoos

 

Photo Credit: Todd Kent on Unsplash

 

Now that you’ve decided where to go, it’s time to tell a visual story of your field trip with your creativity and your camera.   Take lots of photos while you’re there.   Find new angles, show interesting things and compose your shots artistically.   

And here’s the challenge:   narrow your  gallery of pictures to just 6 images.   Just SIX!!    Remember,  purging photos is one skill a photographer must develop.   So out of all the photos you took on your field, choose just six that you feel tell a full story about your field trip or a part of your field trip.  

In your series of six, select an opening shot that introduces your field trip, an environmental shot that shows the overall scene, a details shot, a couple more to develop the story and a then a closing shot.  

2.  Bring a Friend Along

Share your love of photography!   Next time you take your camera out, grab a friend.   

Your friend may love photography as much as you.   If they love to take pictures too, stir up each other’s creativity.  Bounce ideas off each other, give challenges to one another and get that much more creative.    It’s fun to see how you both interpret the same subject to photograph and just by being together,  you’ll discover new ways to approach the same thing.   This is a great time to play around with portrait photography too.   Take photos of each other!   Try different poses, find different types of light to photograph in, or try to tell a story without showing their face. 

If your friend isn’t a shutterbug, they can be your model for the entire shoot!    What a great chance to practice your portrait photography.   Communicating with your friends can be a lot easier than with someone you don’t know, so this is a chance to practice giving direction to your “client”.   Bonus for your friend:  they’ll have a cool, new photos of themselves!

3.  Find a Summer Silhouette

There are lots of fun opportunities for silhouettes during the longer summer evenings.  You can experiment with a number of different subjects.   Use your family and friends as subjects.  Find fun shapes in nature with plants, trees and flowers.  Seek out cool geometric shapes.  Whatever your subject, know that you want to be concerned with shape or the outline of your subject as that’s what you want to show up in the silhouette.

Remember a couple key things while taking a silhouette.

  • Find a strong light source behind your subject.  That’s why sunrise or sunset is a great time to take photos as the sun is close to the horizon.   You can challenge yourself and create a silhouette in the middle of the day, though… you just may have to lie down on the ground and shoot upwards to get the sun behind your subject.
  • Underexposure your shot.  (and make sure the flash is turned off!)

If you are wondering how to create silhouettes, join our ROCK YOUR CAMERA course where you learn all about different exposures to create different effects.  You can join an online camp or take the self directed course.

4.  Capture Bubbles!

Who doesn’t have fun with bubbles?!?!   Everyone loves bubbles!!  Summer is a perfect time to capture the joy of bubbles.  

For photography purposes, you want bubbles that will be long lasting.   The key is using glycerine in your mixture as it thickens the walls of the bubbles and makes them more durable.   A great recipe for bubbles is:

  • 2 tbsp of liquid soap  (i keep hearing that the brand Dawn works well)
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • a few drops of glycerine  (you can find glycerine in the cake section at Michaels or on Amazon)

Let sit for a few hours before using it.

Another tip for taking pics of bubbles?   Choose a dark background rather than being in the direct sun.   That way, your bubbles will stand out more.   Try to stay in the shade to have those bubbles pop (and that doesn’t mean burst .. it means colour pop in your picture!!)  And certainly a calm day that isn’t going to blow your bubbles away would be a bonus too!

Photo Credit: Gianandrea Villa on Unsplash

One more tip.  If you have a camera where  you can and know how to set shutter speed, choose a fast shutter speed so you can “Freeze” the movement of the bubbles and not get blurry ones.  You can learn about shutter speed and exposure in the camera course we mentioned above..

5.  Print a Book of Your Photos

Fast forward to the end of August.  Imagine you had an album of all your best photos and memories from the summer.  It’s a wonderful way to have a keepsake of your summer, and also a great way to look back and see how you and your photos change over the years.

Start the process today.   Create a folder on your computer and label it “Favourite Summer 2021 Photos”.   Whenever you have a photo you know you want in your book, put it in the folder.   Keep adding as you keep taking photos.  At the end of the summer, you’ll have a folder full of wonderful images and memories.   You can put together an album of pictures by just going to your folder to find your faves. 

Some of our favourite album creators are Artifact Uprising, Pinhole Press, and Blurb.   You may have some of your own favourites too.

If you’re feeling extra creative and have a rainy day to just make something yourself, try out this DIY journal of summer memories.  

 

Let us know how your photography projects go!  We will have another list of 5 Summer Photography Projects next week!

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