Five Ideas for April Photography
It's an odd time of year for photography. It's wonderfully light, the evenings are getting longer, and flowers are popping up everywhere. However, they are popping up amidst a mass of brown leaves, and the trees still have mainly bare branches. Our gardens still look more wintry than summery. It's somehow always a month of waiting and anticipation.
In this post, you'll find five tips for spring photography in April—the type that doesn't require an abundance of lush green. Before we begin, I'd like to discuss the light at this time of year.
The sun is still quite deep in the sky, but getting stronger daily. However, it's rarely golden, even in the late afternoon, and even then, the gold is very soft and almost unidentifiable. The sun is still quite deep in the sky, which you can use to your advantage.
You can study your home’s light and shade throughout the year. You might want to start a light diary for each month so that you know when to expect the best light.
Five Tips for Spring Photography:
Tip 1: Stained Glass Windows
Because the sun is usually quite deep in the sky, you can capture fabulous photos of stained glass windows. Go into a local church. They usually have stained glass on all four walls, so you don’t even have to wait for a special time of day unless you want to capture a particular window. The bright sunlight will make the stained glass seem even more colourful and bright. You might want to try out double exposure as well by combining two different church windows.
Double-Exposure. Both photos were found on Pexels.com
Tip 2: Wildlife
There are a lot of comings and goings this month. At the moment, there are birds busy outside building nests, and it was only yesterday that I saw the ears of two hares pricking up through the high grass in one of the fields I walk past every day with my dog.
Tip: Wildlife photography is nothing more than an exercise in patience. There are whole books on the subject that you don't need. All you need to do is study the animal’s behaviour and learn when the best time of day is to capture the animal at this time of year. Then, position yourself and wait until the animal or bird appears.
Captured in New York in 2015
Tip 3: Use the Blue Sky as a Backdrop
The sky can be extremely blue at this time of year, and it offers the perfect backdrop for trees and blossoms. Position yourself so that you are lower than the main subject and tilt the camera upwards so that only the sky is visible behind the subject.
Captured many years ago in Barcelona
Tip 4: The First Wildflowers of the Year
Look for wildflowers at the wayside, cast in a mingle of light and dark. The photo below shows this. The sunlight comes through in some spots but not in others.
Captured today at lunchtime up the road from my house
Tip 5: Tree Shadows
Because the light is strong at this time of year and some trees are still bare, you can capture sharp, distinguished tree shadows like this one:
Captured last year at the end of April in Paris
I hope these ideas have inspired you and your photography for the upcoming weeks.
If you want more inspiration to make spring 2025 your best photography season yet, you might be interested in even more photography ideas in the “Fifty Shades of Spring” online photography workshop 🌸
Ten weeks of creative photography ideas. It includes wonderful topics such as blossoms, flowers, landscapes, poetry, Canva and image editing. Poems, recipes and mood boards complement the content further!
You get lifetime access to the content, and the programme has a community where you can share your results with the other participating photographers.
Click below to learn more, join, and get a feel for the programme with a taster lesson from the Easter bonus content on photographing ‘Eggs’ (not just Easter eggs):