How do I take more interesting photos? It’s the question that shows up at 11pm after scrolling through someone else’s feed, wondering why your shots don’t feel the same. The trouble with that is: everyone else’s photos always look better than our own.
Anyway, your life is probably already interesting. You just haven’t found the angle yet.
So before anything else, ask yourself this.
How would it change things if nobody was going to judge the result?
Hang with that for a second. Most of us shoot for an audience we’ve imagined, even when nobody’s watching. The moment you take that pressure off, photography stops being a performance and starts being a way of noticing. That’s where interesting actually lives.
Here’s where to start looking.
1. Move closer than feels natural.
Almost everything gets more interesting when you’re closer than instinct tells you to be. Half a step in changes a photo more than any setting on your camera ever will.
A term I heard recently was, ‘Intimate Landscape’ and lies between grand landscapes and, I suppose, macro.
2. Find the one clean thing and let it be the whole photo.
A wall, a doorway, a stretch of footpath. Fill the frame with just that. Simplicity photographs like relief.
3. Watch the light before you watch the subject.
I mean, subject is pretty darn important, but light is more importanter. Notice which way it’s falling, how soft or hard it is, what it’s touching. A plain moment in beautiful light beats an interesting moment in flat light, every time.
4. Add the hand.
Steam off a coffee cup is nice. Steam off a coffee cup with someone’s hand wrapped around it is a story. A human trace almost always beats the detail alone. Or, perhaps like the image at the top, maybe just the hint that someone is there…
What’s something in your house you’ve walked past a thousand times without really seeing?
A simple question like this can help you take more interesting photos…
5. Let the background do less.
Move a few steps so the background is one colour, one texture, or blurred right out. A busy background is usually the reason a good subject looks like a snapshot.
How can you remove a distracting background?
6. Shoot the in-between moment, not the pose.
The second before someone smiles. The walk toward the chair, not the sitting in it. That’s usually the frame with the most life in it.
In the newest online course, 5 Tips for Photographing Events, we discuss being prepared and predicting movement. That’ll help know when the best moment is going to happen.
7. Get low or get high, rarely stay at standing eye level.
Crouch down, hold the camera above your head, shoot up at something ordinary. Familiar things stop looking familiar the second the angle changes. Your point of view, and changing where it comes from, really is the key to take more interesting photos.
8. Leave space for the story to breathe.
Don’t centre everything. (I know, most of my stuff is centred) Let a subject sit to one side with room around it. Give the eye somewhere to lead, not just something to show.
What’s the last thing that made you pause, even for a second, before you kept walking?
9. Shoot the same thing more than once.
No, not a hundred of the same photo. Create a short series, three or four frames of one moment from different distances or angles, often says more than a single “perfect” shot. It also takes the pressure off getting it right in one try.
10. Notice what everyone else ignores.
The chipped mug, the reflection in a puddle, the shadow under a chair. The things people walk past without thinking are usually the ones worth stopping for, because nobody else photographed them first.
This is where your point of view is important. Look for the story beyond or beneath the surface.
There it is, 10 ways to take more interesting photos
None of this needs new gear. It needs you to slow down enough to notice, more often, in more ordinary moments than you’d think to look.
That’s the whole idea behind our free monthly photo walk. No experience required, just people walking, looking, and shooting together, practising exactly this.
If you want somewhere to keep practising between walks, a Loop Supporter Membership is $15 a month. It’s ongoing access to prompts, feedback, and a community figuring out their own point of view alongside you. Lurking is fine. Showing up occasionally is fine. There’s no version of doing this wrong.
So, what’s something you looked at today that you didn’t think was worth a photo?