What I expect from photography? I don’t really know. It’s a hobby after all but over time I managed to think about cool things I would like to shoot. Most of them are technical challenges but some of them have a geographical difficulty level. Others are only possible during a specific period of the year.

Here is my list of what I would hunt for a good shoot:

Note: I will try to update this post as I managed to find the opportunity to shoot one of those. Come back later to see what new ideas I added or what I’ve done (strike trough).

Portrait

I don’t mean in a professional way of shooting portrait but it’s only that I am still missing the proper gears. I don’t have any lens with a sufficient wide aperture to get a small depth of field for shooting nice portrait with a blurry background. I should buy one sometime and that time might come sooner than expected.

Sun sets and sun rises

I still don’t know if I will ever get the courage to go out before the sun rise and prepare myself to get a nice picture of the sun coming out of the clouds of moving over the horizon. I think I would love to get to a place where you can see the sun rise above the ocean with a nice reflection over the water.

The moon

I don’t know yet what I would need to get a nice shot of the moon (besides a perfect weather). I might need an adapter to attach the camera to a telescope. I don’t know. I only know that I would like to experiment with the technical aspect of shooting the moon.

The sun? I don’t even know if that is possible but it might be possible with the proper filters (read priceless equipment). I am pretty sure I won’t end up with NASA-grade pictures 🙂

The stars

There is two things I would like to try when shooting the stars.

The first one is obvious: it’s experimenting with a super long shutter speed. I am also expecting difficulties from the earth rotation that might create trails or blurry spots instead or bright stars. I also remember seeing gears that can counter the rotation of the earth to get a fixed point of view on a region of the sky. That might come handy sometime.

The second thing I would like to shoot is what’s called “star trails” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trail). There is a star in the sky that has a fixed point over time in the sky. That star is Polaris (also called the North Star). The objective is to take time lapse pictures of this area and then use a computer software (don’t know which one!) to “merge” all the picture together. The results is a fixed star and a multitude of circles around it (the results of the orbit of each star in the field of view).

A waterfall

Shooting a waterfall with a normal camera always tries to freeze the motion of the water. This always freeze the amount of force that is creates. Shooting with a professional camera over a long exposure has the effect of smoothing the motion of the water like if it was a river of silk instead of water. This effect is stunning me. You can see a sample picture of this effect on Windows 7 themes (think its Landscapes or Nature). You can also have this effect on a river with rocks on the bottom as long as there is movement of the water that creates bubbles but the best effect in my opinion is with falling water.

Fireworks

I have seen so many people trying to shoot fireworks with their phone. This always give terrible results. First because holding a phone with your hands gives blurry images but I am not sure about the capacity of a phone to shoot good quality picture of a firework. However, I wish I could get out and manage to get a nice shoot of a color-changing firework popping that would be as good as a professional one (the kind of picture you see on promotional content)

I have read on the subject and know a little bit how to prepare myself and what to expect. I hope everything will be nice.

However, the difficulty with this kind of shooting is to wait for an event that includes fireworks at the end! Where I live, this only happens once a year on June 24th during the Fête Nationale.

Macro

I didn’t had the time to start with macro photography but I think that will be the kind of thing I will like to shoot. I am also expecting that I will get hooked to this. Shooting close-up picture of objects that people are not expecting to see that close. I am pretty sure that macro photography is one of the first things that beginners learn because it does not require too much technical challenge. I may need to buy another lens for good macro shots.

This might be something I would try first to get my hands dirty. I could also shoot some cliché subject like flowers and insects! haha

Water drops

This is something that is calling me like a lot! I think I might be interested by the technical challenge behind this. To get nice shot of water drops you need to time when releasing a water drop, camera shutter and the camera flash all together to get the picture you want. I might also consider making a test bench on the Raspberry Pi to get everything working together. Or I could just hunt the web to get an already working bench and start from there. The issue I might have are to get really artistic about this since I do not have a lot of imagination (I mean artistic imagination)

Time lapse

Time lapse photography is something that I tried before (a long time ago) but never got to the point of a final product simply because I got tired of it. It seems to easy when you look at the final video but I tend to forget the amount of time required to get the final product. To be able to get something viable you need to prepare yourself before taking the shots because if you don’t, you will have a hard time merging it all together.

However, I do like time lapse photography because you can make a plain (or almost boring) event and make it so much more dramatic. For instance, I would like to shoot my house (or any other subject) during a 24h time lapse (to get the sun rise and set in the same video) just to see what it feels like.

Before I could manage to get a nice video I need to get more shooting experience with time lapse if I don’t want to get too angry about a bad picture set! I might try indoor first like creating a time lapse video of me unboxing something I bought or washing my car just to get to know the complete life cycle and be ready when I will really need a time lapse video

Light trails

There is actually 2 things I would like to shoot using light trails. The first obvious one is car light trails in a scene where the background seems alive like the night life of a city. This have been visited by other photographers many times and I don’t think you need explanation on what I would like to achieve. I might need to start with a boring spot not too far from home to make tests and see what kind of results I can expect.

The next thing I want to try is creating my own light trails with a laser pointing on the ground. You can actually “write” something nice with a long enough exposure. Do it with multiple color lasers (red, blue and green) to create more dramatic effects.

Tilt shift

Tilt shifting gives a really unique effect to your picture. I makes all you subject you shoot as if they were tiny. A picture of a parking lot would look like car toys for a little boy. However, you need really expensive gears to create this effect. I am also expecting a huge learning curve to get good results so that may be my last thing I will try in photography.

Panning

Panning is another cool way to capture movement in a picture. The picture you get is a sharp enough subject on a blurred background. The effect can be achieve shooting a moving subject while panning the camera to follow the subject using a relatively long shutter speed (1/40 to 1/20 of a second). If you are good enough, you get a clear (sharp) subject that may have some part blurred because of the movement. When you shoot a cyclist in panning, you will get a clear head, body & arms but a blurry background and blurry legs.

HDR

HDR stands for High dynamic range. This is a post-processing technique that gets really dramatic pictures not possible with a single shot. The process requires taking 3 pictures of the same scene: the first one under exposed, the second one with a good exposition and a final that is overexposed and then merging the picture together to get a good exposition a all dark and light areas. For instance, taking a picture of a car with the sun in background usually gets a darker car with a good sky. With HDR, you get a good exposition with both.

Chronophotography

Chronophotography is another way to capture movement that I would like to explore. This technique involves taking multiple shots of a moving object from the same point of view. During post-processing, you can merge the pictures keeping the same background and adding multiple frames of the subject. You can get a nice effect of chronophotography by taking multiple pictures of someone running on a beach or jumping of a springboard.

Lightning

Shooting lightning is pretty simple but hard at the same time. You only need a camera that can leave its shutter open for a long time (bulb mode). I am pretty sure that lightning is an easy way to impress your friends without too much hassle. 🙂

Meteor

I don’t even know if that would be possible or not but I would like to shoot the Perseid meteor shower or the Hale-Bopp comet.

Fun generic stuff

• A panorama: Shoot a simple but great panorama picture.
• Fast moving objects like racing cars or planes.
• Smoke art
• Take a picture of the house during all seasons from the same point of view
• Mount a camera on a balloon or kite and take a picture of myself from high above
• Step motion video. Take multiple pictures of myself over a nice background where I jump with my knees folded and move while always keeping my knees folded.