Living in suburbia has its benefits: The air is nicer, there’s less traffic, people are friendlier, and there are so many trees and plants in your surroundings. But some people find places like these a bit boring, especially if they’ve been living in the city for a long time.
If you happen to purchase a piece of land in Townsville, there is one particular hobby that you can take on to make your life in the suburbs much more exciting—photography. Get a camera—don’t use your iPhone so that it will be more challenging—and find locations around your town that are interesting to document. If you’re new to photography, here are a few tips that you can follow to add some flair to your photos:
Play with angles and focus
Go around the town and check out the surroundings. You’ll find something peculiar or uniquely beautiful that is good enough to be photographed. But if you think that the bench covered in moss is a great subject, don’t just take out your camera and take a snapshot. Find an angle that you don’t often see in family pictures.
You can go low and tilt your camera higher to give your subject a grander look, like it’s a giant object. Or you can get in as close as you can and capture a portion of the bench with a little bit of the background in focus. You can even focus on the subject entirely and defocus the background.
Take pictures of people
People are a great subject for photography because you can always sense that there is a story behind every face. Even if you catch a woman checking out the oranges at a fruit stand, you can take her picture that will add drama to the image. Take a snapshot while she’s crinkling her nose as she sniffs an orange. Or you can take the cliché route and find an elderly man sitting on a bench as he watches the world pass by.
Use panning shots
You can use this technique to add some vitality in your suburban surroundings. You’ve heard many people say that life can be boring in suburbia. But if you use panning shots, you can make any image of your town look lively.
Grab your tripod, go out to the streets, and wait for some people or cars to pass by. Prepare your camera by switching to a slow shutter speed. As your subject enters your frame follow them with your camera while taking shots. The effect will look like your subject is moving so fast that their background will look like a blur. It’s beautiful to see photos like this, especially when you’re taking pictures of an idyllic environment. The effect will look like there is a lot of action going on in your suburban area.
Visit a farm or the forest
Nature will always look good on camera. Since you’re in suburbia, you should take advantage of the opportunity to snap lots of pictures of nearby farms and forests. Take a picture of some cows grazing or of friarbirds of honeyeaters lurking in your backyard.
There are so many beautiful subjects that you can focus on in a suburban town that by the time you’re done taking pictures, you have enough images to fill a gallery. By the time you’re done taking pictures, you realize that living in a suburban town isn’t bad at all; in fact, it’s simply perfect.
