3 other ideas for discovering your photography niche

Monday 20 May 2019, 20:10 by Michelle Peeters | 8,695 views | 5 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Recently, I wrote the article 3 ideas for discovering your photography niche, which hopefully gave you some inspiration to try something different and perhaps take a new direction.

In this article, 3 more photographic niches you could experiment with.

Photo: Bethany de Forest

1. Pinhole

With pinhole photography, you use the 'dark room' (camera obscura) phenomenon. This technique was already being used in the time of Aristotle. It works as follows: light enters a dark space through a small hole, projecting the outside world onto the opposite wall. Mirrored left to right and upside down.

With pinhole photography, you use this principle. When you take photos with a pinhole camera, they are often not very sharp and show quite a lot of vignetting. They are often dreamy images that look as if they were taken a long time ago.

You never really know exactly what you are photographing either, because you cannot use the handy features of a modern camera, such as a light meter or viewfinder. The result is therefore always a surprise, which is one of its charms.

Photo: Bethany de Forest. Bubbling Seahorses
So you photograph through a small hole instead of through a lens. You can make the small hole yourself in your body cap, which you use to cover your camera when no lens is attached. Make the hole as small and round as possible, about 0.3mm. For example, drill a hole in the centre of the camera cap.

The hole will still be too large, but you can cover it afterwards on the rear with, for example, a piece of aluminium foil in which you have pricked a hole with a pin. Cover the front of the camera cap with a resealable piece of tape, so that the hole is only open during the exposure.

Now put your camera on a tripod and set it to B(ulb) mode and the lowest possible ISO value. Use a cable release and determine the exposure time by trial and error. If your test image is too dark, double your exposure time until you have a properly exposed test shot. Sometimes this can be an exposure time of several minutes!

After that, you also need to experiment with the sharpness of your image. If it is too blurred, try making a better hole. You can find many guides with ideas for this online.

With pinhole photography, you have a huge depth of field at your disposal. And that is just as well, because since you do not use a lens, you cannot focus at all!

Photo: Bethany de Forest
The Dutch artist Bethany de Forest makes grateful use of this infinite depth of field. She creates models which she photographs using the pinhole technique. They are beautiful surrealist and wonderfully colourful works of art.

2. Wet-plate

With wet-plate photography, also known as collodion photography, you go right back to the earliest days of photography. You work with historical photographic techniques. These days, you see more and more people appearing who are working with wet-plate photography.

In the video below by David Rambow, you can see how he became interested in this technique and how he is keeping it alive for the next generation.

Wet-plate photo by Indra Moonen

3. Underwater photography

Underwater photography is great fun! Choose an underwater camera or make your camera waterproof with an underwater housing, then jump into the water.

Whether you snorkel, dive or take photos in a swimming pool, underwater photography requires not only a waterproof camera, or one made waterproof, but also different settings from those used above water. As you go deeper underwater, more and more colours disappear, starting with red. So you need to add light!

In my earlier article about underwater photography, you can read 10 tips for taking photos underwater.

There is no shortage of possibilities, and if you would rather stick to more conventional photography, Photofacts Academy naturally offers a choice of options. There is still so much to do... Good luck!

You might also like

• 

  Review: Holga HPL-C Pinhole Lens

  by Elja Trum

• 

  Pinhole, or Slow Photography

  by Laura van der Burgt

• 

  3 ideas for discovering your photography niche

  by Michelle Peeters

• 

  Het Perfecte Plaatje; Underwater Job and Back to the Roots

  by Elja Trum

• 

  Impressive underwater photographs by George Karbus

  by Michelle Peeters

• 

  Photographer 3D-prints unusual and functional pinhole lens

  by Elja Trum

5 comments

Have your say

Please note: Articles older than a week can only be commented on by signed-in visitors.
Would you still like to comment? sign in or create a free account.