Whether travelling or moving to a new city, the first thing on my to do list is always to scout some great photography locations. So I thought I'd share my methods and top tips for finding great places in any location for fun photoshoots plus provide a little inspiration with my own photos.
1. Hit up local botanic gardens and parks
I've put my favourite option first. Whatever photography you're into, botanic gardens and parks always provide something. Pretty backdrops for portraits, bugs and bees to try your hand at macro, and, depending on the space, they can provide a nice landscape to practice on. There's usually some wildlife around too - a range of birds, some family dogs, and, if you're an Aussie like me, kangaroos/wallabies.
If you're not sure what you're going to find at the park, you can ensure a fun photoshoot by coming prepared. I always have a few fun photoshoot props/things in my car boot - bubbles, sparklers, a map, confetti, a hat and picnic rug, the (cheap) possibilities go on.
If the park doesn't have any bigger attractions like the pine tree forest or lake in the above pictures, be sure to look for the details. Small things like an individual flower or even some low hanging leaves to frame a face.
The whole park doesn't have to have everything, sometimes it's just one plant or bush. The gorgeous pink bougainvillea in the below photo was the only bright spot beside a lonely path going under some train tracks. If you looked at the park as a whole, it was a bust. But, close up, it provided the PERFECT backdrop for a smoke bomb photoshoot as the afternoon light flowed through the flowers.
Along the same line of thought as gardens/parks, but not quite enough for a section of its own, one of my slightly quirky favourite photography locations are dams. They usually provide a few funky angles to shoot from or at least a vast expanse of blue water. To get to a dam, in my experience (though it could be skewed by my life in small country towns) you often have to take a back road. This alone can be fun to hit with a skateboard or your own two feet.
2. Find a high point or open space at golden hour
Golden hour is an essential in any photographer's toolkit. If you're new to photography, golden hour happens twice a day around sunrise and sunset. It's a time when the sunlight is less bright and is a war, golden hue. There’s a whole lot of science behind this to do with the atmosphere, light dispersion, and distance the light has to travel, but the important thing for us photographers is that it’s a wonderful time of day to shoot.
Golden hour is especially perfect for portrait photography as your subject is highlighted by a warm glow as opposed to harsh light and shadows. Unless I’m specifically shooting the sunrise/sunset, my favourite use of golden hour is to backlight subjects. You can create a golden lining to a subject’s features and use a large aperture to get golden background bokeh.
Golden light really brings out the best in all the other colours, so any kind of photography during golden hour is likely to turn out pretty gorgeous.
3. Look up, look down, and take a walk down the street with fresh eyes
This isn't exactly a location in itself, but in my opinion it's one of the best ways to find photoshoot locations. They're all around you, you've probably just gotten so used to some things that you don't see their photography potential.
Taking a walk with the express intention to notice what you've seen a thousand times is a great way to spot a detailed wall or overhanging tree you might've missed. You might even realise there are entire paths you haven’t walked down.
I grew up down the road from a dirt path leading into a kind of forest of trees that I’d never really bothered wandering down. One day a photographer friend and I figured we would just take a walk. We walked down that path, through the trees, and ended up finding railway tracks, an open field, and some light green bushes perfect for a portrait backdrop. I brought along a little film camera as a prop and, bingo, practically three shoot locations in one! I moved cities before I began my own photography adventures so don’t have any photos from there, but if I even visit that small town again I plan to go back.
4. Visit a museum or art gallery
First, be sure to check with the right people that it's okay to take photos, particularly of other artists' work.
I was lucky to have some pretty creative friends in high school, so the friend who kindly volunteered to take my graduation/formal photos suggested we go to the local art gallery before meeting the other graduating students at the botanic gardens. No one else had grad photos like mine.
If you don’t want to shoot the art of people looking at the art, art galleries are often well-designed, unique buildings so make great subjects for architecture photography, from both inside and out.
If you don’t end up taking any pictures or aren’t allowed, an art gallery is never a waste of time. They are calming places to find creative inspiration and get the ideas flowing.
You don’t always have to look for the state or national galleries, there’s plenty of boutique galleries or even artist studios that double as showrooms which can provide challenging photoshoot locations. For example, there’s a glassworks in my city which does live demonstrations every weekend and has a gallery and shop as well. It’s in a historic building too, so every inch of it is gorgeous. It’s on my list of local photoshoot locations to try.
5. Road trip!
If you've got a whole day for adventure, I typically look for places within an hour or two's drive. National parks, small towns, random fields. Out in the middle of nowhere you can usually find some undiscovered or infrequently traversed spaces. Plus, small towns are full of old or abandoned buildings.
My road trip experiences are mostly based in country Australia, but if you’re lucky to live in or visit somewhere like Europe, a one-hour drive or train ride could take you to a whole other country.
These photos were all taken on day/road trips to locations close to where I've lived or visited.
Don't forget to take pics on the drive itself, both from the car and at stops along the way.
6. Keep an ear out for local events
You can either plan your schedule for a particular local event, or you can see what events are on when you're out taking photos. These days most events have some kind of aesthetic or Instagram-geared photo corner. Think flower shows, art installations in the park, annual show, city celebrations etc. There’s usually lots of pretty lights, often some fireworks, and plenty of people.
7. Look for bridges
You probably drive or ride or walk over several bridges a day. You don't have to live near the famous Golden Gate, though popular bridges can be great places to shoot. Small, basic bridges over small lakes or rivers can provide unique graffiti, shadows for portraits, or low light for sparklers.
8. Go where the people aren't... abandoned buildings
The new, hip photographer loves a good abandoned building or car. Apart from avoiding tetanus, the hard part is finding these hidden gems. So, here's my best tips for finding abandoned photoshoot locations near you.
My first port of call is always google. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and find a blog from a photographer in your area, a local news article, or a bunch of suggestions on Quora. Unfortunately, it isn’t always that easy, so if I have no luck on google, I move to Reddit. You can try subs like r/abandonedporn or r/photography, but these usually contains posts from all over the world. So I usually stick to the sub reddit for my location or, more specific, photographers in my location. There’s usually at least one person that has asked the question before you, even if it was 7 years ago.
Along the same lines, the next valuable place to look is Facebook groups. There are countless facebook groups for photographers, so if you look for one of photographers in your area, you’re likely to find some great suggestions for shoot locations, probably complete with pictures taken there. The other option is facebook groups for abandoned locations. People who love abandoned and overgrown places aren’t always photographers, so the other option is to look for groups based around abandoned locations. One of my favourites is Old & Abandoned Australia. You may have to sort through posts from all over the country, but it’s a great resource.
Finally, using Instagram maps to find abandoned photoshoot locations can be tricky, but if you keep an eye out while scrolling and follow photographers or trends in your area, you might get lucky. The trick is you have to find a photo at a location or know what you’re searching for to get that little map option to pop up. This could work well for checking out whether a location is still current and open if you are getting your info from a ten-year-old reddit post. Maybe one day Instagram will let you just look open the map and see all the public photos so you can find photoshoot locations, but for now it’s not an easy tool but still my last port of call.
*many abandoned buildings/houses etc. are on private property, so I'm not condoning trespassing here. Try and find locations on public land or get permission before you shoot there.
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