Open Up Your Creative Side Through Different Photography Projects!

 Looking for a simple, fun, and relaxing thing to do? Feel like adding a creative activity to your day without getting your hands dirty? There is so much fun, relaxation, and satisfaction to get out of photography, whether it be a fun trip with your camera to capture a beautiful skyline, or cloning your dog to trick your friends.

Since I first picked up a camera, I have had the privilege of doing many different simple and abstract photography projects. These opened my creative floodgates and can bring out your artistic side as well. Following is a collection of examples of these fun projects that would inevitably bring out your creative side while reducing your anxiety at the same time.

I was very lucky to have The Trevor Zoo on my campus at boarding school, so it was only just a short two minute walk from my dorm to all the animals with my camera. With a few connections to the staff and director of the zoo, I was able go into many of the exhibits with my camera, including my favorite: the Red Pandas. While you may not have the chance to physically go into the enclosures, a trip to the zoo with your camera is always an amazing experience.

This is a picture of one of the red pandas that I took. Although he looks like he is sad in this photo, he was actually just itching his head on the tree.

Long exposure photography is another fun and easy project. It is as simple as going somewhere dark, setting your camera up on a tripod, and changing the settings so that the lens stays open for your desired time period to capture your picture.

You can do something quicker and more interactive, such as a 30 second exposure of a person carrying around glow sticks to create something fun or magical:

Or you can have a much more laid back experience, set up up a blanket and some music, and set the camera as the stars for a half hour or more to create a star trails photo:

Regardless of which one you choose, any sort of long exposure photography always finds a way to calm the nerves and create memories that will last forever through your camera.

Last, but certainly not least, is the satisfying process of cloning through photoshop. While this type of project takes a lot of patience, skill, and focus, that is an easy remedy to pull you away from earth and into the zone where you forget about everyone and everything and just hang out with earbuds in editing for hours. If you have a lot of patience and want a nice project to take you away for the world for a while, this is made for you. I have done many cloning project, including cloning my dog 10 times, cloning myself 57 times, and a series of photos for my Culminating Experience for Seniors project at the end of high school. I screen recorded the editing of one of the photos in this series and sped up the editing process from about two hours down to two minutes to share this Youtube video.

This is the image where I cloned myself 57 times. It took three hours to shoot and approximately 28 hours of close editing to create. While it is not the highest quality photo, it was a very relaxing and therapeutic process and the result was still well worth my time.

There are still a million different directions you could go with exploring the realm of photography that I did even touch upon, but these are just a few of my favorites. No matter what route you take while exploring photography, it will nearly always lead toward a fun, relaxing, and satisfying experience.