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Photography Project
What is it all about?
The 4-H Photography project helps youth explore the world through the lens of a camera. Learn about equipment, capturing great images, and sharing your knowledge with others.
Grow in Your Project
Beginner
- Get to know your camera
- Try various lighting techniques
- Study photo composition
- Use different viewpoints
- Tell a story with photos
- Take photos of places, people, and pets
Intermediate
- Use shutter speeds and F-stops (aperture)
- Adjust the depth of field
- Take candid photos to capture a moment
- Manipulate light using flash techniques
- Capture hard and soft light to create moods
Advanced
- Master composition using symmetry, shape, pattern and texture to capture creative photos
- Understand the impact of color
- Experiment with lens filters
- Use wide-angle and telephoto lenses.
Member Resources
Photography Curriculum
3 levels (grades 3-12)
Take Your Project Further!
- Check out books at the library or search the Internet to learn more about technique and composition
- Study a professional portfolio and then create a portfolio of your own
- Enter a photography contest or exhibit. Learn about copyright and privacy laws
- Look at careers and college majors related to photography
- Sell your photos at a local art show or craft festival
- Interview someone in your community who uses photography in his or her career
- Take a tour of a photography studio or a dark room where pictures are developed
- Show your photos off at the senior center or elderly care center
Applying Project Skills to Life
Enhance Your Communication Skills
- Show your friends how to create trick photography
- Give a project demonstration at your club meeting or at a community event
- Create a 4-H photo search game to play at your club meeting
- Tell your friends about different types of cameras
Get Involved in Citizenship and Service
- Take photos of historical sites in your community for an exhibit or scrap-book
- Volunteer to take photos at a family reunion other special event
- Volunteer to organize and label your family photos
- Frame photos you have taken and give them as gifts
Learn about Leadership
- Volunteer to be the photographer at your local achievement day, fair, or other 4-H event
- Host a monthly club photo challenge. Judge photos and secure prizes for the winner each month
- Lead a project meeting about photography
- Arrange for a guest photographer to speak at your club meeting
Showing What You’ve Learned
- Identify the parts of a camera
- Select, mount, matte a photograph
- Photograph various subject matter
- Portrait
- Self Portrait
- Pets/Wildlife
- Landscape
- Panorama
- Buildings/Structures
- Night time
- Reflective
- Action/Sports
- Still life
- Experiment with color variation
- Black/white
- Sepia
- Bright color
- Use a computer to render photos
- Color enhancements
- Spot color
- Filters
- Distortion
- Type treatment
- Create a photo series
- Present a poster about matting and framing
- Share your photography journal or portfolio Demonstrate enlargement and cropping
- Prepare a display about flash techniques
- Compare types of cameras
- Describe the differences in photo formats (.jpg, .tiff, .eps, .png)
- Create a PowerPoint of event photos or a series of photos
- Produce a short video
- Use photo-editing software
- Give a presentation showing how to edit images
- Analyze lighting techniques
- Timeline of the history of photography and/or cameras
- Display of photo editing steps
Adapted with permission from Wyoming State 4-H, Project Information Sheet, Photography. Retrieved from: https://www.uwyo.edu/4-h/projects/expressive-arts/photography.html.
*Resources available at your local Extension office or shop4-H.org.
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