Experimenting with new ideas opens up ways for getting creative at what you do. Similarly breaking the bounds and photographing new themes, subjects or say visiting new locations marks the beginning of photographic explorations and excursions. You can get started at home — pick up your favorite book from the book shelf and feature it as the bestseller or give your creativity a kick-start with photographing the vital element for all known forms of life — H₂O (Water).

The water droplets can be an awesome subject to shoot. It’s varied shapes, colors and dynamic appeal will definetely pay off all your hard work. A word of caution here, “Be careful, you can get addicted!” Quite right, once you get started with capturing the water droplets, you will be surprised with your own results and will try to capture more of it —  amazing shapes, amazing effects and amazing droplets. And now it’s time to check out some cool ways for experimenting with the amazing subject — the water droplets.

1. Splash Set-Up At Home

   Not sure whether photographing the water droplets will work for you. Raise the flags and give a go ahead with setting up the splash set up at home itself. Set up the camera on tripod and tune the camera settings — fast shutter speed and burst mode is preferable. Place a glass of water on a table against white background. Now ask your friend or family members to drop the ice in the glass while you stand by the camera to release the shutter and capture the scene — the splash scene. The spontaneity of splashing water will fill your frames with exciting shapes and interesting compositions. Check out more on photographing splash scene here.

   

   The Splash Scene

2. Have Fun Experimenting With Colored Liquids

   It gets more and more fun as you involve yourself in photograping the splash scenes. Now that you have already tried experimenting with plain water, it’s time to get creative. Add some color to water or perhaps try capturing the splash droplets of colored liquids like Corrie White. Check out her flickr set Fun With Water here for capturing the water droplets like a pro — complete control over the drops, superb colors and remarkable timing. This effect can be replicated by using the dropper for dropping the water droplets or simply by investing in a drip kit which allows you to control the size, interval between drops and the flash lag.

   

   Have fun with color liquids

3. Capture The Dew Drops

   Nature has its own ways of revealing the beauty and morning dew drops adds to its essence. The morning dew drops shining on leaves, flowers and tall grasses just look stunning. Get up early and put on your macro lens to explore and capture bigger than real life dew drops on the complimentary surfaces like leaves or spider’s webs. The soft and angular sun light does its best to make the droplets appear as the pearls.

   

   Sunrise In Dew Drops On Spider Web

4. Experiment With Refractions

   TIme and again, I love to mention a flickr set called A Thousand Drops Of Light. This flickr set consists of some of the finest examples of refraction. Then there is nature photographer Steve Wall’s Flickr set Waterdrops. You will find some inspiring shots and an excellent write-up for replicating those wonderful water drops. Be it Ecstaticist, Steve Wall or Giovanni Orlando (flickr fame jjjohn), have used water as the natural lens to get striking optical effects. Check out what Steve has to say about this — the optical & physical properties of water to act as a lens.

   Simple physics produces these tiny, beautiful and common images. Water is cohesive, it naturally bonds together in the shape of a sphere, and in that shape it functions as a miniature lens that will refract nearby objects. Using that organic lens as seen through your technological lens, will allow you to explore those tiny, complex worlds.

   And then you ofcourse need to pay attention to background, composition and focus — the focus on the water drop as well as the focus on the subject refracted within the drop. The focus stacking technique comes is handy for capturing the refractions with accuracy.

   

   Water droplet acting as the lens

5. Water Droplet On Glass

   Rain drops on the window glass is also a good idea. The water droplets on the outer surface of the glass dominate the composition with irregular shapes. The conglomeration of beautiful droplets create unusual patterns. You can also get some amazing shots by employing light effects. The reflected light and the water droplets together replicate the bokeh effect as in the image below.

   

   Window Glass + Light = Replicating the bokeh effect

6. Delve Into Photographing The Array Of Droplets

   Look at the photograph below. Looks like the photographer has tried to paint the sky with water droplets. You can also try something like this where a numerous water droplets of varying sizes capture the viewers attention.

   

   Painting the water

7. Capture All That Action & Drama

   While photographing the long exposure shots along the coastlines give surreal effect to streaming water, you can also anticipate to capture the crashing waves and gushing waters as well by tuning the camera at fast shutter speed. Capture all that action and drama — ripples, crowns, blur, spills and more.

   

   Crushing Waves

Do you also love to photograph the water drops? Let’s make this list to 10. Add your creative ideas and prolific tips or simply drop by to share your experience with photographing water droplets.

Creative photography opens up the world of opportunities to create awesome, stunning, creative photographs. Checkout Part I of this article “12 Tips To Get Creative For Creative Photography” and “25 Cool Examples Of Creative Photography“. Here is Part II of the series covering the list of techniques which make creative photography possible. So, let’s take a look at various techniques that can be used to make stunning creative photographs.

1. Multiple Exposure

   Multiple exposure enables you to combine multiple images to form a single photograph. Multiple exposure opens up a plethora of opportunities for taking creative photography. You can apply one of the several multiple exposure techniques like zooming in-out, creating mirror effect, forming a swirl image, focus shift, etc to get creative output. You have to invest time and effort in getting the overlay and overlapping of multiple images effectively and creatively.

2. Panning

   Panning is an effective technique for inducing the motion effect while keeping the subject sharp and focused. While panning finds its application in sports photography and for capturing motion and movement, the results produced by moving the camera along with the subject enable you to get unusual and creative output.

3. High Speed Photography

   High speed photography is an art of freezing the motion and movement of the subject. You can get awesome and outstanding photographs by setting the camera to highest shutter speed. This enables you freeze the water droplets (as in splash photography), activity of a dance performer and render beautiful effects by intentionally introducing the motion blurs (by slightly reducing the shutter speed).

4. Zoom Effect

   The zoom effect pulls the viewer to the center of interest owing to the zoom streaks formed when attaining the zoom effect. To achieve the zoom effect, rest the camera on the tripod, slow down the shutter speed and release the shutter and twist the zoom ring, both at the same time. This enables you to present the sharp image of the subject amidst the radiant burst of light streaks. The effect can be better understood with the help of the picture given below.

   

   Basilica de begona by Aitor Agirregabiria

5. HDR Imaging

   High Dynamic Range photography is an interesting aspect of photography. It helps you capture and recreate the scene with all the details and colors intact. HDR is the craft of manipulating the images to compose a single image which contains a greater level of dynamic range, which by default is difficult to achieve in-camera. Thus, it requires you to bracket the exposures and thereafter merge the exposures in the image editor. In the course of creating the HDR photographs, the final image reproduces the colors and effect which makes the scene look unreal, surreal yet creative.

6. Time Lapse Photography

   Time lapse photography is a sequence of shots over a period of time covering a particular event. These images can then be super-imposed to give the effect of movement and activity in the photograph. This technique helps in telling the story in the sequence of shots.

7. Tilt-Shift Photography

   Tilt-shift photography is used for creating a miniature effect, thus portraying the real-life objects as miniature models. Tilt shift photography is basically about using the camera movements of tilt (rotating the camera lens) and shift (adjusting the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back) to compose the scene as miniature scene where the real world objects appear as the toys.

   

   Tilt Shift Train by JoshMock

8. Long Exposure Photography

   Long exposure photography is the essence of the photographs which portray the light trails and the movement of falling & flowing waters. It requires you to go slow on shutter speed to capture the lights and movement / activity of the subject (or in the scene) for a longer duration of time. Owing to the long exposure, the light trails result in formation of unusual shapes. Also long exposures come in handy for stylistic capture of images which create illusionary effect.

9. Using Rear Curtain Flash Sync Mode

   Creativity is the essence of photography and develops when one is free to use the various options at disposal. One such option which finds creative applications are the various flash modes. The in-camera flash is not only the complimentary source of light, it is a great option for creating creative photographs. Especially when turning on the rear curtain flash sync mode. In this mode the shutter opens and the flash fires just before the shutter is about to close. This freezes a moving subject in the final instance of the exposure portraying the blur following the subject, which looks artistic and creative.

10. Creative Use Of Reflections And Shadows

    Reflections and shadows help in creating illusion. Capturing the reflections and shadows as the subject itself or for complimenting the subject, both help in producing creative results. The reflections as the subject imprint  the abstract photography where as capturing the distorted shadows along with the subject makes one curious about the composition.

    

    Marriage By Jcoterhals

11. Transparent Screen Technique

    Transparent screen trick photography enables you to creatively create the illusion as if the mobile screen or the computer screen is transparent. Refer to the article titled “Beautiful Examples Of Transparent Screen Trick Photos” for inspiration and tutorial for experimenting with this technique. Essentially you take a picture of the background of your room and set it as the wallpaper. This would make the laptop screen seem see-through, but only from a certain distance and angle.

12. Studio Set-Up

    Creative photography at its simplest can be achieved through studio set-up where you can emulate the real life natural elements by using props, scenery, scale models, pyrotechnics, steel wool, etc. It becomes fairly easy to photograph the subject with a monument under his hand (owing to scale models) or replacing the face of a human being with an animal or so. You can additionally create artificial snow, fog and clouds (using polymers, sprays, powders or other chemical substances) in the studio to photograph the special effects.

13. Photo-shopping

    Post processing is the hub for introducing the special effects through wisely manipulating the images. While the above mentioned techniques require thorough knowledge of photography basics, post processing requires you to master the photo-editor abilities to meet your imaginations. The opportunities are endless with Photoshop. You can introduce 3D effects, create multiple clones, generate polar panoramas, perform levitation photography, portray floating fruits, creating invisible man and so on. This is the simplest of all and thus fail to render the originality to the image. Resort to Photoshoping as the last option.

14. Creativity

    The essence of creative photography lies in the creativity, which is a conglomeration of creative vision, creative inspiration and ability to create creative illusion. Even though there are multiple techniques for creating creative photographs, the one thing which makes the photographs creative is “creativity”. And to get the creative photographs you should learn to get creative.

Do you know any other technique for creating creative photographs?

Photography itself is a very creative hobby (or profession for that matter). Thus when referring to “creative photography” I actually refer to the extra creativity required above and beyond the creativity for photography. This means tricks and out-of-the-box ideas to capture “photographic fiction” — something that really doesn’t (perhaps) happen or is seen naturally. Here’s an example:

Pearls by jjjohn

So how do you get to be creative above and beyond what you already are? This is a two part series on creative photography. Part I is about getting the creative vision. Let’s get started.

1. Creative Vision

   I confess, I wasn’t born smart or creative. But I was notorious and mischievous. A notorious vision can get you creative beyond imagination. The notorious vision adds in making funny, wacky and spiced up photographs and enable you to portray something unusual which creates interest for the common man. This was just one way of getting creative, while you can closely observe the background and foreground, apply some mathematics and science and this is how you get, the “creative vision“.

2. Creative Illusion

   Remember “Seeing is believing” and “the camera doesn’t lie”. That’s what you need for creating effective photographic fiction — creative photography. This is what induces the element of surprise and interest. If either is missing, it kills the “creative value” of the photograph. Creative photography is more like a magical trick, the purpose is to thus, present the art with such a finish that the viewer consider it as a pure “magic”.

3. Creative Inspiration

   Take inspiration from others work. See how others approached it, what did they look for and how did they capture it. Try the same shots. Try to duplicate the results. On second thoughts, if you can’t make it, fake it. And once you are able to get so far, extend it with your own creativity by presenting your imagination and vision of things around you.

4. Creativity Grooms With Experience

   Experience as a photographer in the long term will groom you as a creative photographer. You would be able to see the way camera sees it. With time you’ll know how various three-dimensional objects align together into a two dimensional photograph. How the Eiffel Tower in the far background will project smaller than the subject in the front and how you can align both to get some notorious perspectives.

5. Creatively Look For The Unusual

   While the human beings are accustomed to daily life objects and scenes, capturing something unusual definitely draws the viewers interest. Look out for the varying shapes of clouds, analyze the relations between the natural elements and creatively observe the real-life frames to get an inspiration as to what will look real, yet surreal.

   

   Welcome To Refactory 2.0 by Ecstaticist

6. Break The Rules Creatively

   Photography is a field of art where the creativity flourishes when there are no limits and bounds. Free your imaginations and break the rules. Sometimes, intentionally breaking the rules help you in getting creative results.

7. Effectively Using Lens Distortion

   If you shoot portraits, you’d probably use a  portrait lens or a zoom lens is also good enough. How about using a wide-angle for portraits? That will distort the perspective bringing in an element of humor. The application of lenses vary according to the scene and the subject. Likewise a fish-eye lens is suitable for distorting architectural photography to render curves to domes and arches. If you inter-mingle the application of lenses, perhaps using a fish eye lens or a wide angle lens for photographing people, it will result in some seriously funny and humorous postures and facial features.

8. Portraying Out Of Context Subjects

   You can get amazing results by reversing the theories of aperture and depth of field. Normally speaking, shallow depth of field is used for focusing the subject (or the center of interest) and separating it from the rest of the scene by blurring the background. You can put it the other way round and choose to blur the subject while focusing on the rest of the scene to get creative results.

   

   Sunflowers by Marcomagrini

9. Capturing Only A Part Of The Whole Truth

   It is not always necessary to portray the entire scene and put forth the complete story. The creativity flourishes when the partial truth is portrayed. When you portray only a part of the truth (or the scene), it eliminates reality in the story and sometimes results in visually ambiguous (or abstract) images. You can also present the perspective of distorted or alternate reality. These qualities leave the viewer puzzled as to what the photographer wants to convey through the images and invite discussions for interpretation of the artists thoughts on the scene.

10. Distorted Shadows Create Intriguing Shapes

    This point came to my mind after looking at a photograph of a ring casting a heart-shaped shadow. The shadow of any subject takes the form of the surface; if the surface is distorted, the shadows tend to be abstract and can create intriguing shapes. Photographing such shadows along with the subject makes the viewer inquisitive about the technique used in making the creative photograph.

    

    Shadows And Reflections On The Wall

11. Playing With Scale, Perspective, Composition, Expression

    Creative photography is about portraying the reality, but with the difference. A difference in the perspective and a shift in the angle of view helps in portraying larger (or smaller) than life images, thus, drawing the viewer’s eye to look at the unusual aspect of the real life objects. Try new angles, compositions and perspectives to portray something unique creatively. Creativity is driven by the discovering new ideas, concepts and vision. Sounds a serious stuff! Make it light by emulating a humorous scene. Perhaps a statue portrayed as kicking the working man or an animal reading the book.

12. Applying Advanced Photography Techniques

    Apart from gaining the creative vision, you need to be familiar with the advanced photography techniques which help you in capturing creative vision. You can get some good creative and trick photographs if you are flexible with using the techniques like multiple exposure, time lapse photography, panning, long exposure photography, etc.

Watch out this space for the Part II of this series covering techniques in Creative Photography. Meanwhile check out some cool examples of creative photography.