Aaaand she’s back! Have you ever looked around and thought to yourself, ‘I can’t find anything to photograph’? Well, look again, because surrounding you are the tools and props you need to take those unique, one-of-a-kind photos. These tools include things as simple as a pair of sunglasses, a sheer curtain, and a twig of leaves. So let’s break these photography tricks down.

#1 Sunglasses hack:

If you live on this here planet earth, with the hot-as-heck sun beating down on you for at least part of the year, chances are you own a pair of sunglasses. All you need to do for this hack is grab those shades and hold ’em up to your camera (whether that be a phone camera or fancy DSLR, any will do). Now the individuality of this one comes with the distance between the shades and the camera. My personal preference is to hold them close enough that you get a nice outline around the edge of the photo, framing the shot with the rim of the sunglass. Like so:

This quick sunglasses trick turned what might have been just your average sidewalk shot, into fun and colorful street photography. The effect this brings to the photo is something that is typically only achieved through the use of a toy film camera or a heavy load of post-processing. But you can get that same effect by simply moving the sunglasses you wear everyday from your face, to in front of your camera lens. To give you a better sense of this trick, let’s check out another example.

Here the sunglasses lens is slightly further from the camera, revealing a bit of the surrounding area. If you look at the corners of the image, particularly the top-right corner of the sky, you will see that transformation. In effect, the sunglasses have transformed this bright blue sky into a moody purple sunset-looking sky. Now if you were to give this photo a slight crop, you could get the same toy-camera look as seen in the previous image, with basically no post-processing work required. How neat is that?

#2 Curtain backdrop for soft window light

Here’s a hot take nobody has heard of, soft window lighting makes for great portraits (lol). But what do you do if the light shining through that window is too harsh and direct? Well, it’s quite simple, do the thing you usually do when the sun is too bright in your living space – pull those curtains closed! But the trick to it is, by using a sheer curtain you can block some of the harsh light without removing it completely, leaving you with soft, well-lit subjects. This next shot shows a bit of what I’m talking about.

Incorporating this curtain to block out those harsh rays not only creates a beautiful shadowy effect on the subject’s face, but it makes for a fun, interesting backdrop as well. If I were to remove this curtain from view, parts of the subject would become blown out, and you would lose that nice shadow-effect on the left side of the subjects face. This is because the brighter sunlight is better able to bounce around the room and back onto his face.

#3 Twig of leaves color-burst

Let’s say you are walking around town and you happen upon a sweet old-fashion car parked on the side of the street. How exciting! You snap the photo and, huh, it just looks kind of meh, like any other old-fashion car picture. Now instead, what if you took that same photo but first introduced an out-of-focus pop of color into the frame. That small addition adds depth, introduces contrast, and brings that motionless car to life.

All it took to get this effect was moving myself and my camera over a few inches to incorporate this out-of-focus twig of leaves into the foreground. Making this small adjustment transforms the image, causing the car to look as though it is actually in motion. Don’t have a twig of leaves on hand? Huh, no problem, this will work with just about anything, particularly bright, colorful objects. The closer and more out of focus they are in the frame, the greater the blur and distortion you will see in the final image. Definitely play around with this one until you get the desired effect for your particular subject.

That’s all for this post, but there are plenty more tricks where those came from. Until next time!

Hey there! It’s bopphoto, aka Sarah Bopp, your internet pal and photographer. Lover of coffee, plants, nature, and old cameras.

Here you will find everything from my photoshoots, posts on tips & tricks, things that inspire me, and some behind the scenes content.

Peace & love,
Sarah

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