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Photography Project
What is it All About?
Capture important moments, communicate your perspective and show how life appears through your lens with photography. Learn about cameras, lighting, and digital and film media so you can be ready when you find that great shot. Build skills you can use to excel in other 4-H opportunities and explore possible new careers.
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.
Click Here for Photography Project Resources
Intermediate
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
- 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
- Show your friends how to create trick photography
Get Involved in Citizenship and Service
- 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
- Take photos of historical sites in your community for an exhibit or scrap-book
Learn about Leadership
- 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
- Volunteer to be the photographer at your local achievement day, fair, or other 4-H event
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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