50 Things to Photograph For Beginners

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 Pro­gram 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!

# 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.

#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.

#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.

#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 is 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. 

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

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 Pro­gram!