An amazing fact about photography is that one can create wonders within the frame of an image. Be it capturing a moment or a movement, a photograph always has the potential to create a magical effect on the viewer.
Sometimes it comes very naturally for a photographer to create a picture following their own imagination. Otherwise, they’ll need to take up basic assignments to stimulate their creativity.
This becomes pretty obligatory when it comes to professional photography. Students from a professional photography school will have pre-set assignments that will give them a chance to explore the possibilities of photography and work on them as much as possible.
Here are few assignments that you can work on that are commonly found in the curriculum of photography training courses.
Click Through the Seasons
In this assignment, choose a location or a landscape which is less urban and shoot there in different seasons. Places where you find snowfall during winter and orange coloured leaves during autumn are the best to pick.
In a country like India, this exercise will not need you to too far and wide. Even a sight of fog during winter or a tree without leaves during autumn can stand as significant features to represent the respective season.
Take a Self-Portrait
Self-portrait is a challenging form of photography that will require you to be skilful about getting the camera settings right before clicking; More so when done in the manual mode. Features like aperture, exposure and white balance will have to be handled with a lot of observation and trial to get it right. Stability of the camera and absence of distortions are important too.
Typical photography courses place this assignment top in the list due to its level of difficulty.
Take The Colour Challenge
It’s fun to play with colours. In photography, picking the right colors for the frame is vital for the right effect to come by. Colours denote emotions and mastering expressions with colour is a high level of expertise you can gain through relentless practice.
Click different pictures with different colour combinations and observe the results to learn the best combinations. Your subjects could be anything viz. colourful buildings, green nature, butterflies or the garden.
Photography courses in India conduct a travelling program where the students get a chance to travel to selected places and click amazing pictures. You may also plan such an outing to cities like in festival seasons like Holi.
Make A Random Clicks Album
Random clicks are as valuable as a well thought of photograph. So click some photographs of random objects or people and make an album out of the best shots in the collection. Judge the photos not only for their technical perfection but also for factors such as their visual importance and symbolism.
From these assignments you also learn the use of some basic rules of photography like the rule of thirds, composition and negative space. These are important ground rules for a professional photographer.
You can also explore different kinds of photography like wildlife, portraits and landscapes. You could even get creative, pick a theme and set your sails to make an exciting travelogue with your camera.