• Menu
  • Skip to left header navigation
  • Skip to right header navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Before Header

Images by Dena

Photography

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Courses
    • Beginner’s Photography Essentials
    • Let in the Light Essentials
    • Posing Essentials
    • All Classes in ONE Bundle
    • Course FAQs
  • Reviews & Results
  • Blog
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Courses
    • Beginner’s Photography Essentials
    • Let in the Light Essentials
    • Posing Essentials
    • All Classes in ONE Bundle
    • Course FAQs
  • Reviews & Results
  • Blog

50 Things to Photograph For Beginners

January 14, 2022

Ever run out of things to pho­to­graph? Today I am giv­ing you 50 Things To Pho­to­graph For Begin­ners! I get it! It’s hard to come up with ideas of what to shoot. I tell my stu­dents in The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class­es all of the time that you should have your cam­era in your hand dai­ly, and if you are doing this…you quick­ly run out of things. And, if you know me, you know I LOVE a list. That is why I’ve put togeth­er my list of 50 Things To Pho­to­graph For Begin­ners. You no longer have to stress because I’ve put it all togeth­er for you.

I’ve bro­ken down the list of 50 Things To Pho­to­graph For Begin­ners into my top 5 favorites, plus forty-five more things for you to shoot.

Take your time with these shots. Remem­ber to use the rules of com­po­si­tion and shoot with inten­tion to make sure that you get the best pos­si­ble shot! Have fun, and don’t for­get to share your snaps in the Face­book Group!

50 Things to Photograph For Beginners

#1 Fruit

Fruit is an easy one as most of us have some lying around. Grab a piece of fruit or a whole bas­ket of fruit and start snap­ping. Remem­ber to shoot a fresh, ripe piece of fruit, as no one wants pho­tos of rot­ten fruit. Place your fruit on any type of back­ground. A wood cut­ting board, a dec­o­ra­tive plate, a mar­ble coun­ter­top, all while remem­ber­ing to make the fruit the star. Just as with any sub­ject, if there are too many dis­trac­tions, your view­er’s eye will have a hard time find­ing the subject. 

Fill the frame with a sin­gle col­ored fruit, or use those lemons to prac­tice the rule of thirds. Remem­ber to shoot with pur­pose and cap­ture the very best image that you can, and keep in mind that the inside of the fruit can often be the most inter­est­ing. If you are slic­ing your fruit, use a sharp knife and even slices to make it more appeal­ing. If you have a fruit tree in your gar­den, cap­ture some fruit on the vine. Pho­tograph­ing fruit helps mas­ter your craft. It push­es you to think cre­ative­ly and out­side the box, so have fun and push your photos!

50 Things to Photograph for Beginners

# 2 Books

Most every­one has books lying around, and if you let your cre­ativ­i­ty flow, you can cre­ate some incred­i­ble pho­tos with them! Try shoot­ing the spines of the books all lined up on the shelf. Or what about get­ting a close­up and fill­ing the frame by shoot­ing the words on the page? Do you have books with beau­ti­ful cov­ers? Try cap­tur­ing the cov­ers of some of your beau­ti­ful books, but be aware of glare when pho­tog­ra­phy as you don’t want to lose the details.

I love pho­tos of the pages of books. You want to use a soft nat­ur­al light when doing this. Try plac­ing your open book near a win­dow and play with the shad­ows of the light on the pages.

If you have a macro lens, now is the time to use it. Use the macro lens to cap­ture the num­bered pages, cer­tain words or para­graphs, or the book’s illus­tra­tions. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.

50 Things to Photograph for Beginners

#3 Eyes

One of my favorite exer­cis­es to do when I feel “out of things to pho­to­graph” is to push myself by focus­ing on one thing. Often I will pho­to­graph my fam­i­ly mem­ber’s eyes. I get as close in as pos­si­ble and fill the frame with only their eyes. It’s a great exer­cise because the back­ground isn’t impor­tant, so you can prac­tice it almost anywhere.

You can focus on only one per­son, you can have two peo­ple lean togeth­er and get both sets of eyes, or you can focus on cre­at­ing a great image of just one eye. One impor­tant thing is to have good light­ing. Place your sub­ject fac­ing a win­dow, work­ing on cap­tur­ing catchlights.

Play with your focal point and aper­ture to cap­ture dif­fer­ent focal points, and remem­ber to use a tri­pod if your shut­ter speed gets too low.

Again, think out­side of the box and push your­self a bit.

50 Things to Photograph for Beginners

#4 Leading Lines

With every pho­to you shoot, you want your view­er to be drawn to the sub­ject, and lead­ing lines are a great way to achieve this. You have heard me say it. Lead­ing lines are every­where. Are you feel­ing a bit bored with your pho­tos? Then grab that cam­era and search for the lead­ing lines.
Search your house, take a walk, look every­where and begin to see how many lines there are to shoot!

Lead­ing lines can be used in por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy, land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy, street pho­tog­ra­phy, or any type of pho­tog­ra­phy you shoot. One thing you want to avoid when shoot­ing lead­ing lines is hav­ing your line lead to noth­ing. Also, avoid think­ing that lead­ing lines have to be straight lines. They can be diag­o­nal, curved, hor­i­zon­tal or vertical.

Look for paths, stair­ways, rail­ings, the lines on your floor and, place your sub­ject at the end and shoot away.

50 Things to Photograph for Beginners

#5 Bokeh

Do you know those beau­ti­ful lit­tle cir­cles of light in the back­ground of a pho­to­graph? That is bokeh, and it’s one of my favorites. Who does­n’t love some beau­ti­ful bokeh? Why not work on per­fect­ing cap­tur­ing the beau­ti­ful blur in your pho­tos? Find a sub­ject, whether it’s a per­son or an object and start cre­at­ing some bokeh. 

Remem­ber, a larg­er aper­ture and good depth of field are need­ed when cre­at­ing bokeh. The back­ground is also impor­tant. A plain back­ground will not give you good bokeh. You want a back­ground with light or sun­light reflect­ing off of water or com­ing through trees. 

50 Things to Photograph for Beginners

If my top 5 aren’t enough to keep you busy, check out the rest of my 50 Things To Pho­to­graph For Begin­ners here…

At Home

Part of learn­ing to be a good pho­tog­ra­ph­er is see­ing the art in things that, to oth­ers, seem ordi­nary.  Look through your house, room by room, look­ing for dif­fer­ent light to place your sub­jects.  Search for dif­fer­ent ways to make every­day items look more artis­tic and extraordinary. 

Your din­ner
Con­tents of your refrig­er­a­tor
Shoes
Games
Plants
Tex­tiles
Bot­tles
Board Games
Fire­wood
Stair­way
Ice Cubes

Body

Once again, cre­ativ­i­ty is key when pho­tograph­ing the body. Crop in tight, cap­tur­ing the skin’s tex­ture or the angles of the body part. Remem­ber to avoid crop­ping at the limbs, but do remem­ber to change your angle and per­spec­tive. Use black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and play with the shad­ows. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.

Hands
Feet
Smile
Pro­file

Outside

When pho­tograph­ing things out­side, don’t for­get to use the rules of com­po­si­tion and change your per­spec­tive. You do not want your sub­ject dead cen­ter. And just like when you are shoot­ing a por­trait, avoid clut­ter­ing your sub­ject or mak­ing the shot too busy. Focus­ing on one ele­ment and mak­ing it stand out will make your pho­to much more appealing. 

Trees
Grass
Flow­ers
Leaves
Branch­es or Logs
Road
Rocks
Trail
Fence
Signs

Around Town

When shoot­ing around your town, you will use many of the same tech­niques that you used when shoot­ing out­side.  Look at things and shoot from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.  If pos­si­ble, shoot from above, or get down low and shoot from below. Remem­ber to look for the lit­tle details in things to add to the sto­ry of your photos.

Golf­course
Lake, Riv­er or Pond
City Build­ings
Train Sta­tion
Farm
Parade
Sport­ing Event
Skate­board Park
Ice Skat­ing Rink
Polit­i­cal Ral­ly
Bus Stop

People

Pho­tograph­ing peo­ple is a beau­ti­ful way to tell their sto­ries. You want to cap­ture their char­ac­ter so that the view­er feels that they know the indi­vid­ual. Remem­ber, the indi­vid­ual is your focus, not the back­ground or sur­round­ings. Prac­tice posed shots or can­did pho­tos, all while cap­tur­ing their emotions. 

Par­ents
Kids
Pets
Sig­nif­i­cant Oth­er
Self Por­trait

And…if you’re up for a challenge:

Once you feel you’re ready to push your­self even fur­ther, why not work on a few more chal­leng­ing shots.  Use your imag­i­na­tion and cap­ture the best pho­tos you can of the list below.  Again remem­ber to push your cre­ativ­i­ty when com­ing up with your ideas.

Sil­hou­ette
Low Light
Macro
Gold­en Hour

I hope this has giv­en you a start­ing point for those days where you are search­ing for some­thing to shoot. If you want a week­ly chal­lenge, then come Join the Learn Pho­tog­ra­phy with Dena for our Project 52 Chal­lenge, and if you’d like to reach your pho­tog­ra­phy goal even faster, check out the Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Class!

Share to your network

Filed Under: DSLR, Info, Projects, Uncategorized

Previous Post: «5 Easy Ways To Display Your Photos 5 Easy Ways To Display Your Photos
Next Post: 10 Tips To Get Sharp Focus In Your Photographs 10 Tips To Get Sharp Focus In Your Photographs»

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I’m Dena!

I am a nat­ur­al light, lifestyle pho­tog­ra­ph­er with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence. I will teach you exact­ly what you need to do to start tak­ing amaz­ing photos!

Categories

  • DSLR
  • Info
  • Light
  • News
  • Projects
  • Smartphone Photography
  • Student Stories
  • Technical
  • Uncategorized

Beginner’s Photography Essentials

Online Beginners Photography Class

Do you want to trans­form your pho­tos from snap­shots to beau­ti­ful pho­tos? You have the fan­cy cam­era all ready to go… you start­ed to take a pic­ture and then got stuck try­ing to fig­ure out the settings…The truth is that mas­ter­ing your cam­er­a’s set­tings and cap­tur­ing amaz­ing pho­tos feels com­pli­cat­ed! But it does­n’t have to be so hard…

ENROLL NOW!

Join our Community!

Come and join the private "Learn Photography with Dena" Facebook Group and get the answers to our most urgent photography questions.

JOIN NOW

Footer

About

Start tak­ing amaz­ing pho­tos with these step-by-step online pho­tog­ra­phy classes.

Navigate

  • Home
  • About
  • Courses
    • Beginner’s Photography Essentials Online Course
    • Posing Essentials Online Course
    • Let in the Light Essentials Online Course
    • All Classes in One Bundle
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Student Login

5 Days to Better Photos Challenge

Follow Dena

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube

Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions · Copyright © 2023 Images by Dena · Website by Wright Communication ·