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Summer is here, in the northern hemisphere anyway, which for many photographers is peak photography season. But while warm weather and long summer days may inspire you to pick up your camera, finding a decent subject is harder than it looks. Strong sunlight and great photography don’t often mix. Long days are beautiful, but on the flip side that means you have to get up early or stay out late to take advantage of the golden hour. Not everybody can manage it.
So to help you out I’ve taken ten assignments from my ebook 100 Creative Photography Assignments that you can do no matter that the weather and the light. You don’t need to get up super early to give them a go. All you need is an hour or two of spare time and a little inspiration.
I’ve added some extra tips in italics to help you get the best from these assignments in the summer season.
Photography Assignment 3: Trees – Urban trees
Tip: The perfect assignment for a cloudy summer’s day…
Humans have planted trees for centuries in formal gardens and to bring nature into towns and cities. Photographing trees in urban environments gives you something different to traditional landscapes.
How can you explore the juxtaposition of man-made and natural? In the photo I’ve used here the tree, obviously well-cared for, fits perfectly with the historic home. The two go together, as intended. But in other situations you might finding a jarring contrast between the natural and urban environments.
Photography Assignment 11: Color – Color contrast
Tip: Ideal for bright, sunny days…
Create a photo with two strong contrasting colors. Placing a colorful subject against a deep blue sky is an easy way to do this. Consider using a polarizing filter to increase color saturation. Explore the color profiles on your camera that enhance colors (look for names like Vivid and Landscape).
This is a good brief to tackle if you’re making photos during the middle of a sunny day, in bright sunlight that’s too harsh for landscape photography. Use that light to your advantage and look for brightly painted, man-made objects as your subject.
Photography Assignment 24: Texture – Weathered surfaces
Tip: You can do this assignment in any light. If it’s a bright, sunny day then pay extra attention to composition and avoid clutter. Keep it as simple as possible. Can you use shadows in an interesting way?
Old buildings of all descriptions are made of materials with interesting textures. The definition of old is relative, your chosen building can be hundreds of years old or it can be just a few years old. The important thing is that it looks old. That means visible signs of weathering, like the metal wall and wooden door frame in the photo on the right. Some texture surfaces, like rust, also have interesting colors that you can use.
Photography Assignment 26: Flowers – Keep it simple
Tip: Shade is the best light for making photos of flowers. It doesn’t matter how sunny it is, you’ll always find a shady spot in a garden.
You can create effective compositions when photographing flowers by keeping it simple. Use a macro lens, close-up lens or extension tube to get up close. Experiment with aperture to find the balance between a blurred background and keeping the flower sharp.
Creating minimal compositions can be hard in flower photography because you often get busy backgrounds. Look for interesting color combinations of flowers against green backgrounds. Build it into a series of minimal compositions by grouping similar images.
Photography Assignment 42: Sky – Active skies
Tip: If you live in one of those places with endless blue skies you may have to give this assignment a miss. But for the rest of us, look up, and see what those clouds are doing.
An active sky is a blue sky combined with white cloud making interesting shapes and patterns. If you’re making photos during the day, like the one on this page, then an active sky adds texture and is more interesting to look at than a clear blue sky.
This is another brief that’s fun to try on a sunny day. The clouds in the sky soften the light so it’s not as harsh as direct sun.
Photography Assignment 62: Light and shadow – Embrace hard light
Tip: There’s a lot of hard light around in summer. So why not embrace it? How can you use it to make your photos more interesting?
In this assignment your brief is to photograph a scene on a sunny day where shadows are falling across the subject in an interesting way.
Look at the way the sun casts shadows across the scene during the day. How do the shadows move as the sun moves across the sky? Do the shadows make interesting shapes? For example, in the photo on this page the shadow falling across the building comes from a neighboring house and you can clearly see the chimney.
Photography Assignment 66: Gardens – Wide view
Tip: Got a garden you want to visit? Then go on a cloudy day. Not only is it better for close-up photography, but it helps you photograph wider vistas.
For this assignment your brief is to use a wide-angle lens and make a photo that shows a wide view of a garden. You don’t have to include the entire garden in your photo (which would be impossible in many cases anyway). But it should be an interesting part of it, like the flower bed in front of the brick wall in the photo on the right.
If you can, shooting in the golden hour will add mood and beautiful warn color to your photos. If not, a cloudy day is better than a sunny one as you won’t have to deal with high contrast.
Photography Assignment 80: Composition – Limited color palettes
Tip: Simplify, simplify, simplify. Look for bright colors (plenty of those about in summer) and move in close for stronger compositions.
The final composition assignment tests your observational skills by asking you to make photos of scenes with a limited color palette.
Often this type of scene is dominated by a single vibrant color, like the orange flowers in the photo on the right. Using a limited color palette simplifies the design of the photo by simplifying the colors used in the composition.
If you’re outside making photos, then this brief is a good test of your composition skills. But you can also think about this assignment if you have more control over the scene.
If you’re making a portrait of somebody, for example, what happens if you ask them to wear a blue jumper, blue jeans and stand in front of a blue wall? What difference does it make if they wear an orange jumper instead? Exploring the use of color like this can give interesting results.
Photography Assignment 84: Mood – Bad weather
Tip: You’re on vacation, or plan a day out. And what does it do? It rains, of course. I exaggerate, but if you’re caught out by bad weather then make the best out of it, as it probably won’t last long.
Wherever you live, you will experience bad weather at some point during the year. If you’re unlucky, you’ll even experience bad weather when you’re away on vacation. This assignment challenges you to make interesting photos in bad weather conditions.
The subject is open, so you have plenty of choice when it comes to interpreting the brief. In the photo on this page, for example, I wanted to capture the mood of a hot, muggy, rainy summer afternoon in the city of Hangzhou, China. I saw the scene at local temple. The way the water glistened on the stone paving and the hills disappeared into the mist, captured something of the day’s hot mugginess.
Photography Assignment 91: Landscape – Road signs
Tip: Unusual subjects like this are great for summer photography. It’s out of the box thinking that makes you look for interesting juxtapositions between the man-made and natural worlds.
Some photographers equate landscape photography with photographing the wilderness, but there are many parts of the world where the natural landscape coexists with man-made elements. In long-settled countries like Britain the entire landscape has been affected by man in one way or another.
For this assignment your brief is to incorporate road signs into a landscape photo. How can you juxtapose man-made and natural elements of the landscape in an interesting way?
In the photo on this page, I was struck by the symmetry created by placing the road sign between the distant wind turbines, another man-made element of the landscape.
The Assignments ebooks
Check out my Assignments ebooks for more ideas and inspiration.
100 Creative Photography Assignments
The Magic of Black & White: 50 Assignments
