Channel Your Inner Minimalist

Minimalism is subjective, but it can be summed up as something that screams simplicity. If you believe that less is more, this is the style for you. Love it or hate it, without getting too arty farty, here are some minimalist photos that will inspire tranquility, channel your inner minimalist and make you want to say namaste.

Scoopshooter: Danielle SansonScoopshooter: Sanja C.

Minimalism is powerful because it draws on simple lines, geometry, strong shadows and contrast, typically associated with lone objects. To express you inner minimalist, follow these tips to photo genius.

Subject

You don’t need to go ultra modern to do minimalist, but it helps. Architecture lends itself well to this style, as does anything with geometric shapes. It also works well if you can get close up to focus on colours, textures and shadows. A good tip is to open your eyes! Every day you walk past mundane objects that if you look a little closer are really rather beautiful (in their own way), the trick is to capture this unseen beauty. Things like steps, walls, buildings and any object surrounded by negative space. The minimalist photographer’s best friend — remember, you do not need to fill space.

Composition

Keep the composition of your photo simple. An arial shot is a good approach to take for this style of photography, well suited to food and beverage photos. Simple doesn’t mean boring or easy, you will need to take your time to arrange the subject(s) and frame the photo in an interesting way, otherwise simple can look simply boring. With just a few things in your frame, now is a good time to play around with depth of field — manually choose the point of focus (not applicable for arial shots, however).Scoopshooter: Evgeniya Muraveva

Color

As well and shadows and contrast, color plays a huge role in minimalist photography. If your photo is simple, you need a point of interest and color can often be the answer. An otherwise dull object can be transformed when photographed artistically on a plain background. Of course not all photos are winners. You need to take some risks and experiment as many photos can turn out rather lack lustre. Scoopshooter: Anna XenitelisScoopshooter: Dawid Lech

You don’t need to live in soho or be a hipster to take minimalist style photos, channel your ‘less is more’ mindset and look for moments and negative space. Submit your minimalist photos to the free Scoopshot app and you never know, someone might just discover your photos and buy them! Voilà, you’re an artist.