Summer Photography Ideas — How to Take Cool Shots | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Sum­mer is the time for walks, good mood, hol­i­days and vaca­tions. It is dur­ing this sea­son that you can shoot a lot of beau­ti­ful and inter­est­ing con­tent for your per­son­al blog, social net­works, fam­i­ly album. After all, there are no bare autumn trees, win­ter frost (red nose, peel­ing skin), spring slush and melt­ing snow. The nature is bright, col­or­ful, it is warm and sun­ny out­side. This means that many ideas can be real­ized.

We have col­lect­ed inter­est­ing ideas for a sum­mer out­door pho­to shoot that will make your blog stand out from the rest.

Mak­ing a beau­ti­ful pho­to shoot in the sum­mer is much eas­i­er than it seems. Pho­to: goodfon.ru

Ideas for a sum­mer pho­to shoot any­where
Pho­to in flow­ers
Shoot­ing from a drone
Pho­to ses­sion out­doors in the sum­mer in the water
In the com­pa­ny of ani­mals
Nature and land­scapes
Sum­mer Shoot­ing Tips

Express photo shoot

In the sum­mer, many tend to take a lot of cool and inter­est­ing pho­tos. How to put it on stream? Arrange an express pho­to ses­sion with ready-made images on the street or in the stu­dio.

How to orga­nize a cool pho­to day? To do this, you need to find:

• pho­tog­ra­ph­er
• make­up artist + hair­dress­er (you can do with­out them if the idea is sim­ple);
• loca­tion (and equip it — and ideas can be gleaned from

this arti­cle);

• cos­tumes (if the idea is com­plex and sim­ply set­ting the par­tic­i­pants a dress code is not enough);
• a blog­ger who will tell peo­ple about this idea and attract them.

The essence of the event is that the team is ful­ly prepar­ing the loca­tion and props. Peo­ple sign up for the pho­to day. Each is giv­en 15–30 min­utes of time. In one scenery, all the par­tic­i­pants of the pho­to day are filmed in turn.

Ben­e­fits for the team:

• the most pro­duc­tive day (no need to trav­el between loca­tions, waste time, all clients go one after anoth­er);
• min­i­mal invest­ment (one loca­tion), but good rev­enue (due to a large num­ber of cus­tomers);
• a lot of cool pho­tos for port­fo­lio;
• new clients who can then come to new pho­to projects.

Ben­e­fits for par­tic­i­pants:

• low price (cheap­er than order­ing a per­son­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er for an hour);
• min­i­mum time spent
• up to 10 retouched pho­tos that you can show off on social net­works.

And now we will show what inter­est­ing shots can be trans­lat­ed into real­i­ty.

Ideas for a summer photo shoot anywhere

Option 1

What is sum­mer asso­ci­at­ed with? With bright and tasty food, with inter­est­ing drinks. We offer to take a non-stan­dard pic­ture with a donut. You will need:

• pre-chilled donut (so that the icing does not melt at the wrong time);
• dress­ing;
• fish­ing line.

The donut needs to be tied to a fish­ing line. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er stands at a dis­tance of 2–2.5 places from the mod­el on a chair / stool. In one hand he holds a cam­era, in the oth­er — a donut on a fish­ing line.

You will need an assis­tant who holds the sprin­kles. The mod­el reach­es for the donut, the assis­tant toss­es the sprin­kle between the cam­era and the sweet. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er needs to take a spec­tac­u­lar pic­ture.

A sim­ple idea that sub­scribers will love. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Jor­di Koalitic

Option 2

For this shot, you will need 2 frames. The task is to stick them into the ground at a dis­tance of 30–50 cm from each oth­er. The mod­el stands on one side of the frames (at a dis­tance of 2–3 meters from them), the pho­tog­ra­ph­er on the oth­er. You need to take a pho­to so that one of the frames and the sil­hou­ette of the mod­el are in the sec­ond frame.

This sum­mer pho­to on the shore of the reser­voir will be espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful. Since the frames and the per­son him­self will be addi­tion­al­ly reflect­ed in the water. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Jor­di Koalitic

Option 3

The mir­ror is a pop­u­lar acces­so­ry. With it, you can take many beau­ti­ful pic­tures dur­ing a pho­to ses­sion in the sum­mer in the city, for­est, park, field, on the beach, etc. By the way, reflec­tions can be “caught” not only in the mir­ror, but also in oth­er sur­faces (glass­es, win­dow, pud­dle).

Cool sto­ry — shoot­ing with reflec­tion replace­ment or oth­er effects. For exam­ple, in this case, the sur­face of the mir­ror in post-pro­cess­ing became sim­i­lar to the sur­face of water. And from touch­ing her went “cir­cles”. Pho­to: publy.ru

But it’s eas­i­er to take a pho­to like this. It is enough to put the mir­ror on the right, the mod­el on the left and shoot so that it does not get into the frame from the side. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Jor­di Koalitic

Option 4

Do you play ten­nis or ping-pong? There is a great idea! You will need a rack­et, a ball, water and an assis­tant. The main idea is that the assis­tant needs to wet the ball and toss it in front of the cam­era. The mod­el at this moment can swing or hold the rack­et straight. The focus must be on the ball. It is bet­ter to set the cam­era in burst mode to take sev­er­al shots in a row.

You can make a cool pho­to shoot on the street in the sum­mer even in an ordi­nary yard or on a sports ground. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Jor­di Koalitic

Photo in flowers

Anoth­er sym­bol of sum­mer is flow­ers. Iris­es, eustoma, ger­beras, calla lilies — there are many sum­mer flow­ers that look unusu­al and attrac­tive. You can take sum­mer pho­tos:

• in a flower field;
• with a bou­quet in hand;
• with indi­vid­ual flow­ers in the hair (stand­ing, lying, sit­ting).

A good idea is to choose a dress to match the flow­ers. In a bright and col­or­ful flower loca­tion, you can have a pho­to ses­sion of a preg­nant woman, fam­i­ly, wed­ding in the sum­mer.

An exam­ple of a beau­ti­ful pho­to in flow­ers. Pho­to: diasp.eu

Shooting from a drone

A great idea for a pho­to shoot out­side in the sum­mer is to use a drone. Even if you are just stand­ing in the square, with­out spe­cial acces­sories and super ideas, the shot from above will look styl­ish and cool.

When shoot­ing from a drone, you don’t even have to seri­ous­ly pose. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel COOPH

If the drone was not at hand, it can be par­tial­ly replaced with a mono­pod. How to do this, men­tioned in our blog.

Shoot­ing from above is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take beau­ti­ful pic­tures and pre­serve the mem­o­ries of your trav­els. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel COOPH

Photo session outdoors in the summer in the water

It’s easy to make unusu­al shoot­ing in the for­est in sum­mer. It can be just a walk or a styl­ized pho­to ses­sion. For exam­ple, you can cre­ate a mod­el image of a for­est nymph. But even more unusu­al shots can be tak­en if there is a body of water near­by. For exam­ple:

• cre­ate an image of a mer­maid, sea nymph;
• immerse the mod­el com­plete­ly in water and shoot from above, or at an angle of 45 degrees, sur­round­ing it with algae, water lilies;
• use the smooth sur­face as a mir­ror — to cap­ture a beau­ti­ful reflec­tion.

An exam­ple of a shot in a pond. Pho­to: mobillegends.net

We have col­lect­ed even more ideas for pho­tos in water and even in milk in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.

In the company of animals

Need to come up with an idea for a fam­i­ly pho­to shoot in nature in the sum­mer? A great option is shoot­ing with ani­mals. They har­mo­nious­ly look with adults and chil­dren. And most impor­tant­ly, it is easy to find a com­mon lan­guage with them. A pho­to shoot in the sum­mer can be done with a horse, dog, cat, rab­bits, lla­ma, etc.

We strong­ly rec­om­mend that you apply for such ser­vices to breed­ers who are engaged in pho­tog­ra­phy. It is impor­tant that the ani­mal is not afraid of the cam­era, strangers.

In addi­tion, it is nec­es­sary to con­duct pre­lim­i­nary brief­ing with adults and chil­dren. Explain that ani­mals should not be grabbed, swung at them, shout­ing loud­ly. This can fright­en and hurt them.

Beau­ti­ful pho­to of a girl on a horse. Pho­to: grandgames.net

Nature and landscapes

In the sum­mer you can take a lot of spec­tac­u­lar pho­tos of land­scapes. Even near­by hills, plan­ta­tions, parks look espe­cial­ly fresh and inter­est­ing this sea­son. Cov­ered with lush grass, with hun­dreds of small inhab­i­tants, with dif­fer­ent “moods” at dif­fer­ent times of the day.

Nature is beau­ti­ful. And a per­son has a chance to cap­ture its beau­ty with the help of pho­tog­ra­phy. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Simon Booth

What to shoot?

Gen­er­al plans (view from a hill, a hill, a field, a plain). You can find the cen­tral object of the com­po­si­tion — for exam­ple, a tree in the mid­dle of a plain. Take shots in the morn­ing, after­noon, evening and night — then glue it into one. For exam­ple: divide it into 4 ver­ti­cal parts and insert a part from dif­fer­ent pic­tures into each.

Stars. If there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get away from the city, you can shoot the Milky Way, plan­ets, star tracks. And we even have a whole guide on astro pho­tog­ra­phy from a cam­era and from a smart­phone.

Tex­tures: tree trunk, grass, hay, tree crown, spruce nee­dles. It’s beau­ti­ful and can be used lat­er. For exam­ple, for web­site design (make a sol­id page back­ground) or sell on pho­to stocks.

Details. Insects, ani­mals in their nat­ur­al habi­tat. Get inspired by the won­der­ful pho­tos of Don­al Boyd and our wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy guide.

Any lit­tle thing can become the hall­mark of your blog. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Thomas Heaton

Summer Shooting Tips

Remember the golden and blue hour

This is the time to take spe­cial shots.

gold­en hour - the time after sun­rise and just before sun­set. Dur­ing this peri­od, every­thing around is filled with warm, gold­en light. You can make very roman­tic, ten­der pho­tos.

blue hour before sun­rise and imme­di­ate­ly after sun­set. Every­thing around takes on an unusu­al blue hue. Not the best time for por­traits (they will “blue”). But a good time for shoot­ing land­scapes.

Take a reflector

If you want to take a beau­ti­ful pho­to shoot out­doors in sum­mer, bring at least a small reflec­tor with you. It will help soft­en shad­ows, save you from harsh sun and reduce post-pro­cess­ing time. You can imme­di­ate­ly buy a 5in1 kit so that you can choose the right reflec­tor for a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.

Don’t forget a tripod

Shoot­ing nature, land­scapes and stars for a long time is impos­si­ble “hand-held”. There­fore, a good deci­sion is to buy a tri­pod. But many mod­els are quite heavy (from 3 kg), so mov­ing around with them is prob­lem­at­ic. The solu­tion is to buy a mono­pod. You can attach a cam­era, smart­phone, cam­corder to it. Weighs less (approx­i­mate­ly 1–2 kg), eas­i­ly folds, more mobile.

play with the light

In sum­mer, the sun is usu­al­ly bright and the light is harsh. There are sev­er­al solu­tions:

• take the mod­el into the shad­ow;
• wait until the sun hides behind the clouds;
• scat­ter direct light (using a reflec­tor into the light);
• use reflec­tors (for exam­ple, not only white to soft­en the shad­ows. But also gold to give the pho­to a spe­cial mag­ic).

And in detail about the set­tings of the cam­era for shoot­ing on the street in the sum­mer, they told in the blog.

We hope that our ideas for a sum­mer pho­to shoot will help you take cool and extra­or­di­nary pic­tures.