As part of our ongoing series to help you get more creative with your digital camera, each month we’ll be publishing some fun photo ideas to inspire your imagination.

Below are 9 top photo ideas to try in July, which range from found fine art, ‘planetsheres’ and factories, to shooting fashion portraits with natural backdrops.

We’ve provide some amazing images and quick photography tips by photographers who are experts in these fields.

And be sure to come back at the end of the month and share what you’ve done on our Facebook wall

9 creative photo ideas to try in July

Image by Matthew Maran

1. Photograph a bird of prey
There are few wildlife shots as impressive as close-ups of wild birds of prey in flight. However, photographing them can be challenging, and requires skill, patience and practice (check out our great tips for capturing pictures of birds in flight).

Wildlife and landscape pro Matthew Maran says the key to getting eagle shots as good as the one pictured here is perseverance. He spent hours trying to get this quintessential flying shot, going through thousands of frames 
and missing many opportunities.

“The light just wasn’t right,” says Matthew. “The eagle flew away in the opposite direction; the eagle didn’t fly at all… But revisiting the location on another day and going through the same process improved my anticipation, and I began to learn the behaviour and look for signals of movement before the eagles launched.

“A quick reaction time is absolutely essential for shots like this,” Matthew adds, “and having a camera that shoots at five frames per second or more gives you a much greater choice of images when it comes to making the final edit.”

If you’re new to bird photography, the best place to start is at a local birds of prey centre. Here you can be fairly certain of getting a good shot, because the animals’ movements and trajectories can be predicted (download our free bird photography cheat sheet).

When you’re ready to venture into the wild, Matthew recommends not straying 
too far into the wilderness.

“Getting close to birds is tricky, so eagles that are habituated to human activity are a far easier subject to shoot. This is very important for big impact images and capturing behaviour – something I always look for when photographing wildlife.”

Fancy trying your hand at shooting birds in flight? Follow our top tips…

Get started today…

• Attach a telephoto lens and set your camera to Shutter Priority mode, focus tracking and continuous shooting. You’ll need a shutter speed of at least 1/500 sec to freeze fast motion.
• While you’re waiting for your subject to take off or fly into the desired location, take a test shot of the anticipated background. If it’s mostly sunlit foliage, a correct exposure will have a histogram that peaks at the middle. If the background is in shade, the histogram should peak to the left of the middle (find out how to read a histogram). If the background is sky, the histogram should peak around the middle or to the right-hand side, depending on how bright the sky is.

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‘There Is Nothing Beautiful Around Here’ is the poignant name of the photo book that Orue is hoping to create. The book will show the city of Richmond, California, which is known as an area that suffers from high levels of crime. Orue says, “The book depicts unexpected moments in a place where people have come to expect only ugliness and suffering.”

Orue is looking for crowd-sourced donations via Kickstarter, and judging by the images on his page there, the content of the photo book looks promising. The photographs portray images of understated beauty in a somewhat destitute area, providing an optimistic feel to his work.

Take a look at his project and video on Kickstarter to find out more.

You might also be interested in:

21 photography facts you probably never knew
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You might also want to take a look at our big (and very useful!) collection of photography cheat sheets.

Photo ideas don’t get much simpler. All you need to create photo art like this is a simple home studio and a collection of kitchen utensils. No fancy studio lighting or extreme macro gear required. You could even shoot this with a compact.

It’s amazing what you can photograph at home with a little bit of imagination and creativity. We’ve already shown you how to make fine-art food photos and create minature landscape pictures (out of mashed potato). Now it’s time to turn the contents of your cutlery drawer into photographic art. Take a regular kitchen fork, for example – we use them every day, but how often do we take the time to stop and admire their beauty? Probably never for most of us, and that’s where we’re missing a trick. With the right lighting, composition and treatment, everyday objects can become exciting photographic prospects.

The set-up’s simple. You need nothing more than an angle-poise lamp and a piece of white card to make a straightforward but effective tabletop home studio. Getting the lighting right requires a bit of trial and error, and it will take some experimentation before you nail it. Use your DSLR’s LCD to get a good idea of lighting and switch your picture style to black and white, so the LCD displays a mono image. This is a superb ‘pre-visualisation’ tool, and if you’re shooting in RAW (which we recommend) your files will still have all the colour information anyway, should you change your mind later on.

How to create kitchen photo art

1. Find an angle

To create strong shadows, use an angle-poise lamp so it’s easy to alter the direction of the light. Use a piece of white card to make a scooped backdrop and experiment with the angle of the lamp.

2. Camera settings

Shoot in RAW and set your DSLR to monochrome so the images on the LCD appear in black and white – most cameras can do this. It’s a great pre-visualisation tool, and your original file will still have all the colour information anyway. Working with a tripod-mounted camera enables you to use a low ISO setting for maximum quality. We used mid-range aperture settings (f/8 – f/11), but experiment with different apertures until you find the balance of blur/sharpness you prefer.

3. Processing the images

Create a Black & White adjustment layer in Photoshop and experiment with the colour sliders. Then create a Curves adjustment layer and make a generous ‘S’ curve for a hard look with strong contrast.

Everyday kitchen objects can come to life with simple but creative lighting. Frame up the shot with your camera free of the tripod to find the best compositon.

Increase the impact of your pictures by framing them as diptychs and triptychs. You can create your own templates in Photoshop, or simply download our readymade 25 free triptych frames and drop in your own images.

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Photo Ideas

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Photo ideas don’t come much more entertaining than this. The idea of placing model figures in amongst ingredients can transform a meal into a miniature landscape. Fry ups turn into meat safaris and soup bowls become steaming savoury jacuzzis. Of course there are many other everyday household objects that make excellent settings for macro scenarios, but food is ideal. It can be easily sculpted and is instantly recognisable. Here, that great British staple, bangers and mash, works a treat as the Smash instant mash mix could be easily manipulated into the shape of a mountain. But there are many other areas in our daily life where miniature adventures can take place – all you need is a little imagination. Here are some photo ideas to give you food for thought…

In addition to a DSLR and tripod, you need:

Location

Food is a wonderful material for making miniature landscapes. Just about anything will do if you use a little imagination. The budget sausages, tinned peas and packet of Smash used for the main image above only cost about £2.50, and they were perfect. And best of all you can eat your set once you’re finished. For a background we found a standard cleaning cloth, which produced a good-looking sky. Once you’ve located and constructed your miniature landscape it’s time to introduce the characters…

Figures

Sourcing the right figures for a scene is essential to creating a story. Hornby sells some wonderful sets of figures. For less than £6 you can pick up a themed collection of around six characters.Preiser has a great range too. Your local model-making shop can also be a good resource for other accessories to refine your figures, such as paint and brushes. Position your figures so they tell a story – a random collection of models on a plate of food will just look, well, random.

Lighting

To light the scene, use two off-camera flashguns: one for the background and one for the subject. Use a home-made reflector to bounce the light. If you only have one flashgun, try using more than one reflector, carefully positioning them to create a sense of depth in the scene. To create a harder and more direct reflected light, try covering one of them with kitchen silver foil.

Macro lens

We used a 60mm macro lens. The figures are tiny, so you will be working at greater than life size magnification. You can of course fit close-up diopters or extension tubes on regular lenses, but a dedicated macro lens is more convenient. Longer focal length macros will give you more working distance between the camera and the models.

Camera settings and technique:

1. Camera setup

For macro effects to work here, you need to keep your camera setup as simple as possible. Because we were working with multiple flashguns, we needed to switch everything to manual, including exposure settings, focus and flash power. Start off by establishing a good general exposure, establishing the depth of field you want. This will vary from scene to scene, but here we used f/8, which was perfect for the scale of the set. Next, introduce the main light, adjusting the flash power rather than changing the camera settings. Use your DSLR’s LCD screen and histogram to assess the lighting, and once you’re happy with the main light, introduce the second background light. You’ll need to focus manually for precision focusing at close range.

2. Lighting tips

In our setup we used two flashguns and a simple home-made reflector to light the scene. If you don’t have two flashguns you can easily improvise with your on camera’s pop-up flash and a more elaborate combination of reflectors – try using silver foil as an alternative to white card. If you do have two flashguns, position one (set to Slave mode) to illuminate the background. Remember, lighting the background separately helps create depth. The other flashgun is taken off-camera, and positioned to the left of the scene to give a ‘sculptural’ feel to the mash mountain.

3. Additional equipment

We used a Seculine Twin Link T2D radio trigger to fire the flash remotely. A small reflector made of white card is perfect to fill in the shadow areas and was positioned to the right. Natural light can also work well, so if you don’t want to use flash, find an area near a north-facing window.

Top tip: think of a story

However lighthearted your scene, establishing a sense of narrative is really important. In our sausage shot above you can see that there’s a conversation between the characters. “Help, I’m stuck in sausage fat!” There’s an imagined dialogue between them that makes the scene seem realistic. So when choosing figures, try to visualise how they will interact and what type of scene will work best. Try to add drama (or comedy) for extra impact….

Like this creative photography project? Now try these:

Photo ideas: shoot creative light spirals at home

Photo ideas: photographing smoke and smoke photo art

Photo ideas: amazing water drop photography

Photo ideas: photographing water splashes with flash

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Photo Ideas

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Pinhole photography is one of the most primitive forms of photography and while it might seem a bit odd to try to turn an expensive digital SLR into a basic pinhole camera the results can be impressive – even if they are a little blurred. Read on to discover how to fashion your very own pinhole camera.

1. Drill a hole

Take your DSLR‘s body cap and locate the centre. Use a power drill to make a hole in the middle being careful not to go into your table. We found it best to start with a small hole and work up to a final hole of about 5mm.

2. Recycle a can

The tin foil from a soft-drink can is ideal to make a pinhole. Use a tin opener to remove the top. Rinse the inside so it‘s not all sticky and carefully cut a small square - about 3cm should be good.

3. Make a pinhole

To make the pinhole you‘ll need to select a small sewing needle. Twist the needle into the centre of the foil until you’ve penetrated all the way through. Again, be careful not to ruin your table (or your fingers).

4. Refine your pinhole

The hole will probably be a bit rough around the edges so use a very fine sand paper to smooth it out. Ideally you want the foil around the hole to be as thin as possible without it letting any light through.

5. Light tight

Attach the foil pinhole to the inside of the body cap ensuring the pinhole is in the centre of the larger hole. Use black electrical tape to secure the hole making sure that light can‘t leak through any gaps.

6. Shoot away

You won’t see anything through the viewfinder so you‘ll need to experiment with your composition and exposure. Switch to Manual mode and try a 30 seconds exposure while flashing the subject repeatedly.

Your flatbed scanner doesn’t need to be a mundane tool only ever used to scan old photos and boring documents. Here, we show you how to make a photogram scan and create amazingly artistic effects with your standard scanning device.

1. Scout for objects

A scanner has a very small depth of  field so your objects need to be relatively flat. The nautilus shell, glove and dried piranha we found proved excellent subjects. Just make sure the surface of your scanner is clean.

2. Background

To create a black background open the lid and place a piece of black card about five inches above the scanner, we’ve supported it on plastic tubs. you may need to experiment. depending on which scanner you’re using.

3. Make a scan

We’re using Epson software, which enables us to control the crop, resolution, exposure and colour. You’ll be able to get super high-res images, probably much higher than you’d get from a top-of-the-range DSLR.

4. Digital darkroom

Open your image in Photoshop and clean up any dust marks using the Clone Tool from the Tools Palette. You might want to crop out any distractions at the edges, such as the supports used to hold the black card in place.

5. Mono invert

Go to Image >Adjustments>Black and White and covert your shot. To replicate the an x-ray, which suits our subject matter, go to Image>Adjustments>Invert. This will reverse all the tones, essentially making a negative.

6. Split-tone

To split-tone go to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Select foreground to background and change the colour stops to blue for the dark tones and cream for the light tones.

Most modern desktop scanners have the capability to scan negatives without any major issues. Here, we show you how to take those scans and improve them dramatically.

1. Straighten and crop

The image needs straightening, so choose the Straighten Tool and select Original Size from the Canvas Options. Click and drag the tool along the horizon line from one side to the other. Next, use the Crop Tool to crop away the areas of exposed canvas.

2. Colour cast removal

To correct any colour cast, go to Enhance>Adjust Colour>Remove Colour Cast. Click with the eyedropper in an area of the image that should be a neutral colour, such as the lighter areas within the sky. It may take a few attempts to get this right. Click OK when you’re happy.

3. Healing dust spots

Add a new Layer and choose the Spot Healing Brush. Choose a soft brush, check Proximity Match and All Layers. Zoom in to the image and use the brush at a small size to dab over all the small marks and dust spots.

4. Selective Levels adjustments

Use the Quick Selection Tool to select the sky. Add a Levels Adjustment Layer via Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels. Drag the White Point slider to the left to brighten the highlights and modify the midtones with the central (Gamma) slider.

5. More Adjustment Layers

Use other Levels Adjustment Layers to change the tones in other areas of the image. You can restrict the effect of the Adjustment Layer by filling it with black via Edit>Fill Layer. Paint over the area you want to show adjustment by using the Brush Tool with white as Foreground.

6. Fine adjustments

You can make fine tweaks to each Layer mask by painting into it with black and white. Remember, you can always adjust the settings by double-clicking the Adjustment Layer once you’ve painted the mask. When you’re happy, flatten the image via Layer>Flatten Image.

Photoshop gives you a number of ways to transform tired photographs into something new. In this tutorial, we show you how to take a shot and create differently coloured versions of it to combine into a new photo collage. You’ll be using the crop tool, Adjustment Layers and a colour palette to create your enhanced pictures.

1. Pick your colours

Pick two colours that complement and contrast with the colour swatch you’ve created. Make a square colour swatch for each of these two colours. Now, create three new documents to be filled with each colour

2. Crop and adjust saturation

Use the Crop Tool to make the rose image square. Choose an appropriate size depending on whether you want an A4 or A3 canvas and remember that you’ll need space for nine images of the rose. Now create a Hue/Saturation Layer and reduce the Saturation to -100.

3. Colour Fill and Blending mode

Now, create a Colour Fill Layer and use the Colour Picker to select the first swatch. Change the Blending Mode of the Colour Fill Layer to soft light. This will create a softer wash over the existing image and leave you with a more sculpted effect on the rose’s edge.

4. Adjust Levels

Create a Levels Adjustment Layer. Use the three sliders at the bottom of the histogram to adjust Levels and add contrast to the image. Keep the channel on RGB to add contrast to the overall image. Adjust contrast gradually so you don’t distort the image.

5. Flatten and repeat

Flatten your image. Now, repeat the process for the other two colours. Remember that you’ll need to make different adjustments to your Levels for each different colour. Flatten each of the other two images when the process is complete.

6. Create the final canvas

Go to File>New and create either an A4 or A3 canvas. Choose a transparent background and keep the resolution at 300dpi. Copy and paste each rose image three times, into three rows. Use the grids (View>Show>Grid) to line up each of the images. Then flatten the image.