I hope that was a fun challenge for you.  It should have shown you that in order to get good photos it does take a little bit of work, much as we would love perfect locations/setups to land in our laps!  Since there isn’t a technique as such for this month, I thought I’d show you my inspiration and what I took from that.  All of these came from instagram, and their usernames are in the introduction:

Minimalist photos:

Something I’ve been drawn to lately are minimalist photos where just a few simple elements make up the entire story.  This photo by @thomaspeschak appeals to both my minimalist love and my love of sunsets, and by angling the camera so that far more of the photo is sky, it gives the perspective of just how vast the ocean is with the one lone kyaker on it:

This photo from @_tuck4 shows that sometimes having other photographers with you can provide just the minimalist focal point that you need.  I’m looking forward to meeting up with a bunch of photography friends at the end of August, and I’m hoping to get plenty of opportunities to capture some great photos with some of them as props!

One of the minimalist styles of photo that really fascinates me is the one where people and buildings are used together to create the photo.  @lajlah has a fantastic eye for people and colourful buildings coinciding, so I’ve pulled together a few examples.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go and paint a few walls in Glasgow…

Here’s a few from @thatsval who gets some great shapes in her shots:

Cityscape photos:

More than anything I would like to work out how to get up on high in my city, or in fact in any city I have access to, to work out how to get some of these kinds of shots.  This first photo is by @hirozzz of Tokyo.  What appeals here is the misty sunrise and the purply pink light it is casting on the city, only the red tower really standing out as a different tone altogether:

You may notice as you go through these photos that I’m not as drawn to photos taken in broad daylight.  It’s not that I dislike daylight, but more that dawn/ dusk/ night time gives a more interesting vibe.  New York city is very recognisable in daytime, but the angle of this photo by @diaryofzach with the pilings in the neon lit river makes it look somehow more exciting.

Landscape photos:

Oh I do love a good sunset on my landscapes, and this one from @kpinko is fantastic.  It ticks a number of boxes in the ‘rules’ of landscape photography with the rocks coming across to the right on a line of thirds, lead in lines from the left with the edge of the rock pool pointing towards the sun, and some foreground interest with the pool:

Ever since @jkudall (you may know his big sister Amy) posted the first of these light shows I’ve been trying to work out where on earth I could get a good road and landscape together to be able to recreate something like this locally.  At this time of year it gets dark too late here to try this, so I’ve got a couple of months to come up with somewhere.  I have a couple of city options, but the natural landscape ones are challenging me more, not because of a lack of mountains, more a lack of roads near them that would be busy enough to generate light trails!  Here’s a couple from the series, the light trails and the landscape tying them together (excuse the format, IG is square, so the landscape format photos come through with a large chunk of white top and bottom).

People And Nature / Travel

I think I mentally lump people and animals together, because I tend to think of them as all being travel related.  While I can get landscapes, cityscapes and even minimalist opportunities relatively locally, these photos always seem the most unattainable on my inspiration list, because I rarely get an opportunity to capture these sorts of photos.  This was taken by @amivitale after a photography workshop in southern Montana, and I just love the colour of the light and the sunspots obscuring the features of the riders:

This is one of the most iconic images of the Serengeti/Masai Mara wildebeest migration, which has been captured by thousands of photographers over the years.  This one was taken by @beverlyjoubert and even though the animals at the front have actually stopped, the clouds of dust and stampeding wildebeest in the background give the impression of just how frenetic the whole process is:

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s inspiring you right now, attainable or otherwise!