Adding that wow factor to your photography is something many of us aspire to. Photography effects are a great way of reaching this goal.
Discover what the coolest photography effects are and how they can be easily applied to your work.
Light painting requires a long exposure, and it needs to be carried out at night.
You will need a tripod, a camera capable of very slow shutter speed, and some form of light painting equipment.
The following list includes examples of light painting equipment you could use.
Light painting is an amazing photography effect to try. This photo was produced using a LED light stick.
With light painting, the camera stays still, and the light source moves. With kinetic light painting, the camera moves, and the source stays still.
This is a type of intentional camera movement. There are three main forms of this; zoom, rotation, and random movement.
A silhouette can be created when you photograph an object or person against a much brighter sky. In terms of photography effects, this is the proverbial low hanging fruit.
It is easy to achieve, as long as you follow a few simple steps:
There are many locations where you can find reflections. The first that usually comes to mind is a reflection in a pond, but there are lots of other possibilities.
Remember to use a circular polarizing filter to enhance the reflections.
Bokeh is the aesthetic blur produced by the shallow depth of field.
Not all backgrounds produce good bokeh. A background of blurry clear skies would be a bad choice here. What you’re looking for instead are lights, or maybe sunlight reflecting off something in the background.
You need some separation between the main subject in the foreground and these lights in the background. You will then need a large aperture, a long focal length or a combination of these.
A narrow aperture won’t work because the background won’t be blurry. Therefore, a kit lens might not produce this effect. Instead, use a prime lens with a large aperture.
In this photo, the street lights in the background produce pleasing bokeh. Tomer Dahari- Pexels
You can create shaped bokeh by covering the lens of the camera with a disc of black paper. Cut a shaped hole in the middle of the disc before placing it on your lens.
For example, you can make a star, heart, or a triangle shape. Instead of background bokeh balls, you will have lots of background shapes!
One of the most unusual camera optics you can use today is the lensball. With the lensball, you can shoot upside down refracted images within the glass. This is a great piece of camera equipment to get into your bag.
Its versatility means you can use it for both portrait or landscape photography. Although it is better suited to landscapes.
There are plenty of ways you can photograph the ball. The typical way is to use a macro lens, so you can focus on the image in the ball while blurring the background into bokeh.
Refracting a background photo within a lensball can be a lot of fun. Bogdan Dirică- Pexels
Through the use of picture filters or an adapted camera, you can shoot infrared photos. This is the part of the spectrum that you can’t see with the naked eye, so when you get your filter it will appear black.
The filter will let infrared light through, and you can use this to create a dreamscape-like effect. When using a filter, you will be taking long-exposure images, so you need a tripod as well.
This photography effect also requires a bright sunny day.
The initial photo produced with this type of photo will be red. To create the desired photo you then either need to adapt the white balance in-camera or edit it further during post-processing.
This photo of Himeji castle was a great location for infrared photography. The sky with some nice clouds was also perfect.
Apart from light painting and infra-red photography, there are many other ways to use a long exposure. You will need a tripod for all of the examples.
Want to learn more about long exposure? Check out our Infinite Exposures course! You can learn how to take amazing images, like the one below.
This effect is the landscape photographer‘s best friend. It is HDR post-processing using the manual setting.
For digital blending, you will need luminosity masks in Photoshop with a set of bracketed images. The aim is to balance the light across the frame in an as natural and believable way as possible.
A lot of HDR programs are plug and play, with the option to adapt a few settings. Digital blending gives you complete control.
If you’re a landscape photographer, this is the photo effect you really must learn.
Sunset photos are good subjects for digital blending.
Low Key Lighting is one of the favourite effects of portrait photographers. This is where you make the background dark and only light the face of your model.
You can create this using natural or artificial light. Using off-camera flash will give you a much higher degree of control over this type of photo.
Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels
Panning is the effect produced when you follow a moving object with your camera while using slower shutter speed. You can pan any moving object. Cyclists and cars tend to be the easiest to get sharp images of.
The faster the moving object is, the faster your shutter speed can be whilst still retaining motion in the background. If you’re panning Formula-1 motor racing cars, shutter speed around 1/80th might be slow enough. A walking person, however, is likely to need a shutter speed of 1/10th.
This technique is usually carried out handheld. If the situation allows, you can try photographing from a tripod. The tripod should ensure smoother motion as you follow the object you’re panning.
Motorbikes are amongst the easiest the pan. There are no moving parts, and they have a smooth motion.
There are many photography effects you can use to amaze your viewers. You can also use post-processing to achieve an even more outstanding look.
Have you ever tried any of the effects listed in this article? If you have, feel free to share your photos in the comment section of this article. If you haven’t, now is a great chance to go out and try something new!
