USWelcome to our blog!
Here we document our children’s photography courses and workshops, including some of the amazing work our children get up to.
Draw It, Take It – After School Photo Club
We’re sadly at the end of the term for our After School Photo Club. It’s been a great 10 weeks of teaching the children all about different techniques and watching them progress their photographic learning experience. Despite the cold and miserable weather the children have really taken on each challenge with enthusiasm and we are
Capturing Action – After School Photo Club
A few weeks back we introduced the theme of capturing “action’ for our After School Photo Club! This exercise is great for getting the children not only moving around but thinking about shutter speed and how to freeze an action in the frame. We brought props like colour ribbons and balls for them to use
Five Senses – After School Photo Club
The five senses is a great theme for After School Photo Club as it requires the children to really consider how their senses allow them to experience their environment. Interpreting that into pictures really challenges them and it’s great to see them look around the playground and classroom for inspiration. It was interesting to see
Exploring the Wonders of Springtime Photography – Online Photography Classes
Welcome, young shutterbugs, to a delightful journey through the enchanting world of springtime photography! In this blog, we’ll dive into the vibrant colours, lively fauna, and captivating landscapes that make spring a photographer’s paradise. Join us as we explore the magic of the season and learn how to capture its beauty through the lens. Get
Drawing with Light – AfterSchool Photo Club
The start of a new term in January can always be a bit tricky for our after school photo club. The slightly cold and damp weather and the lack of light gives us extra challenges but also extra opportunities to teach the children how to create pictures using the light they have or by getting
Photography Workshop for Teenagers: Capturing the Essence of Autumn Close-Ups and Still Life
Photography Workshop for Teenagers: Capturing the Essence of Autumn Close-Ups and Still Life Welcome, young photographers, to an exciting photography workshop for teenagers! In this blog, we’re diving into the fascinating world of capturing autumn close-ups and still life. Whether you’re a budding photographer or just looking to explore a new hobby, this guide will
Christmas Gift Guide 2023
It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas…! We love Christmas time and we love recommending fun photographic gifts for our students to enjoy and to keep them inspired. We’ve put together an amazing list full of cameras, tripods, books and fun accessories that every young photographer will enjoy! Our gifts are for kids as
Black and White – After School Photo Club
As well as teaching our students how to notice colour and light in their surroundings we also encourage them to use the black and white setting on their cameras to make a study of tone and texture. Often removing the colour from an image can allow the viewer to really see what the photographer wishes
Ridgeway 50 Photos Project
We are so excited to announce that we are working with The Ridgeway National Trail and professional photographer Matt Writtle on the Ridgeway 50 Photos Project. In celebration of The Ridgeway National Trail’s 50th anniversary as a National Trail, Arts Council England has funded this project to help inspire budding and experienced photographers to visit
What is it? – After School Photo Club
Our next theme for After School Photo Club was “What is it?” Where we encourage the children to look for frame that is so obscure it is difficult to tell straight away what the image is of. They used the flower setting on their Nikon Coolpix cameras to zoom in and create their close up
You are an Ant – After School Photo Club
A great way for children to learn how to use different angles and perspectives in photography is to have them look through the view finder as if they were an ant. Keeping their cameras down low and looking at everything from a different position increases their ability to make more creative decisions in their compositions.
Photographing what you like – After School Photo Club
We’re so happy to be back at school teaching our Photography classes to our after school photo club children. We have some wonderful new students this term so the best way to introduce all the new comers to our Nikon Coolpix cameras is to start off with a topic that challenges the children to capture
Photography Journal – After School Photo Club
It was so sad to say goodbye to some of our Year 6 after school photo club members. Some of them have been coming along to our photo club for a number of years so giving them their journals on the last week was a real treat. At the end of each term we put
Capturing Nature’s Giants – Photography workshops for children
Photographing Trees – Photography workshops for children Welcome, young photographers! Have you ever wondered how to take amazing pictures of trees? Trees are nature’s giants, standing tall and proud, and they make fantastic subjects for our photographs. So, let’s grab our cameras and get ready for an adventure! ADD PHOTO In our photography workshops for
Photographing Bugs & Bubbles – After School Photo Club
Bugs and Bubbles are 2 things that most children love to chase after so they make a great topic to keep our after school photo club kids engaged. We split the group into 2 and whilst one group went off to hunt mini beasts with their cameras set to macro the other group popped their
Photographing Water – After School Photo Club
That mini heat wave a week ago meant that our theme of “water’ for our after school photo club was very welcome. The children had a lot of fun using their waterproof Nikon Coolpix cameras to create some watery images. We brought in some fab reusable water balloons for our students to use. They were easy
Photographing Action – After School Photo Club
If there is one thing our after school photo club kids are good at, it is moving around, so our week photographing “action” came very naturally to them all!! It’s a great way to get rid of a bit of energy after school too! We taught the children to use the burst setting on our
Photographing Toys – After School Photo Club
One of the children’ favourite weeks in our After School Photo Club is when they get to bring in their favourite toy to use a subject to photograph. We are always so impressed by the ideas they come up with especially when they work together to make their pictures. They get super creative with their
Photographing Summer Sun
Finally it feels like Summer is around the corner and for the first time this term the sun decided to come out to play properly during our after school photography club this week. There is still a little nip in the air but as the weeks progress I’m sure it will feel much warmer so
Photographing Spring – Kids Online Photography Courses
Springtime is a season of renewal and growth, making it an excellent time to take photographs. Whether you’re a professional photographer or just starting, capturing the beauty of spring can be a fun and rewarding experience. In this blog post, we’ll give you some tips on how to photograph springtime and recommend our kids’ online
Photographers Without Limits – ‘Amatuer Photographer’ article April 2023.
Our amazing ‘Photographers without Limits’ project with the DofE and Nikon is in Amateur Photographer!! Check out participant Caitlin’s great work! “Change for the better: in this news feature, Kingsley Singleton explains how Nikon, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the Sharp Shots Photo Club are working
What do you like to take photos of?
We’re super excited to be back with a new term at Sharp Shots Photography Club! We hope you all enjoyed your New Year and are getting stuck in with those resolutions…This week we introduced some new faces and a few familiar ones to our cameras and asked them “What do they like to take photos
Christmas Gift Guide 2022
It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas…! We love Christmas time and we love recommending fun photographic gifts for our students to enjoy and to keep them inspired. We’ve put together an amazing list full of cameras, tripods, books and fun accessories that every young photographer will enjoy! Our gifts are for kids as
Read and Photograph
Here we are, the final week of after school photography club for 2022! To celebrate their journey, the class were tasked with 14 different phrases, which the children then interpreted in their own way through photographs. As if telling a story with a single photo! They could either photograph what they see, or create something
The focus for this week was to create a fun and vibrant photo collage from a selfie our students took with their cameras. Not just a regular selfie, but one using flash to ensure it was sharp and clear. The children had a lot of fun flipping through various magazines, cutting and sticking colourful and
You Are An Ant Today!
The focus this week for our after school photography club students was how much a difference perspective makes in their photos. We encouraged the children to think outside the box when it came to composing their images. Their only rule was to pretend they were an ant with a camera, so their photos had to
Who Are You!
We are back for the Autumn term! We have loved welcoming new and old faces to the clubs! Our theme this week was ‘Who Are You?’ This lesson helped our pupils think of creative ways to show who they are through a camera lens. We started with teaching them how to take a photograph, mentioning
Sharp Shots ‘Photographer Without Limits’ in partnership with the DofE and Nikon.
Great news, we’re super excited to announce we’ve teamed up with the youth awards programme DofE Award and the international camera and optics manufacturer Nikon to provide nine DofE award participants with the chance to learn the art of photography for their DofE Award skills section. These lucky participants will explore how to bring
After school photography theme this week is: blur!
This week it was all about taking creative BLURRY images! We encouraged the children to shake the camera about as much as they could, to run with it across the field and to spin it in a circle (as long as they have the wrist string attached!) The best way for the students to capture
This week’s after school photography theme is: Summer Sun!
This week’s lesson focused on capturing each child’s favourite element of summer. We asked them what summer means to them, and what is the first thing they think of when you say “Summer.” Answers included holiday, playing, blue skies, ice cream and lots of colour! We got them to think about what blooms in the
Photographing Water!!
In this wet session, the students learned how to capture water using our underwater cameras. We showed the kids the underwater setting and the action setting. The students used buckets, and water bottles to pour and slosh the water in various ways so they could capture interesting water shots. In this session the students learned
Hide and Seek!
This week our after school photography clubs theme was Hide and Seek. This lesson taught the children to really look for their image and introduced the idea of fun into their photographs too. They needed to pair up in groups of two or three and take “where’s wally” photographs. Their partners needed to hide, but
This weeks exciting theme is: Action!
This week we focused on action photos at our after school clubs’, taking super SHARP shots of moving objects. We introduced the camera’s shutter to the kids, and they found out that when they press the shutter button to take the photograph, it literally opens and shuts the “shutter or door” to make the image.
After school photography club theme: Bring your own Toy!
This week the students brought a toy or two from home to photograph. Our young photographers learned how to include their toy in every image, making sure each image was different. Students were encouraged to be creative with their scene settings on their cameras and to try new things! (super far away, really up close,
Photography Top Tips!
Photography Top Tips! Did you receive a new camera or phone for Christmas and want to learn some awesome top tips about how to take amazing photographs? Well then this blog is for you! Below are some of our TOP TIPS for photographing Winter! Capture the frost. Get out early before it melts! Use the
Christmas Gift Guide 2021
It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas…! We love Christmas time and we love recommending fun photographic gifts for our students to enjoy and to keep them inspired. We’ve put together an amazing list full of cameras, tripods, books and fun accessories that every young photographer will enjoy! Our gifts are for kids as
Phone Photography Course Online
Learn to take incredible photos with our Phone Photography Course Online. We live in an age of being able to do anything and everything via our smartphones. Smartphone’s are now the worldwide medium for photography, and literally in the palm of our hands. It is easy to get carried away with the incredible camera and
Online After School Photography Club
Call The Shots with our After School Online Photography Club ___________________________________________________________________ It’s been a strange year but, as we slowly return to a form of normality, there’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months. Summer’s almost over, which means we’ve now got our sights on Christmas, Bonfire Night and, of course, Halloween.
We are now supported by the Royal Photographic Society
We are super excited to announce our new collaboration with the Royal Photographic Society. “The Royal Photographic Society is a charity that exists to increase the knowledge and understanding of photography, to promote the highest standards of achievement in photography, and to encourage the public appreciation of photography.” The patron of the Royal Photographic Society
Photography Book for Kids
Photography Book for kids “You can take amazing photos” by Lillian Spibey “You can take amazing photos” can be purchased from Amazon, Waterstones, & Harper Collins. We are so excited to announce that our founder, Lillian Spibey, has a new inspiring photography book for kids called “You can take amazing photos” published by Harper Collins. All
Photography Webinar Workshops for Teens
We’ve been teaching photography webinar workshops for teens since the lockdown started, and it’s been wonderful! We’ve been teaching teens photography online all over the country, and each workshop is a different topic. We’ve taught Nature photography, capturing action, colour photography, storytelling, black and white photography, still life photography and many more! It’s been really
“Grounded”, The Weekly Photography Competition for Kids With Incredible Prizes
Surrey’s Sharp Shots Photography Club Teams Up with The Royal Photographic Society & the Nikon School. As people have been asked to stay at home, due to the COVID-19 virus, we are encouraging kids and teens to photograph their “grounded” life at home, in isolation. Kids & teens will be encouraged to photograph their daily
A Photographic Treasure Hunt
Our Photographic Treasure Hunt! A ‘Photographic Treasure Hunt’ is an exciting and fun way of taking photos of things we can find all around us, and a brilliant tool to teach our students about visual literacy. It’s wonderful to see how each student interprets the task we give them. It is also a great way to
Draw it & Take it!
Draw it & Take it! In our after school photography Clubs, we taught our students how to plan a photograph. The students learned how great photographers will go to great lengths to get the photo they want. Our students started with whiteboards and we asked each phtographer to draw what they wanted to photograph. Our students
Action Photographers
This week at our after school photography clubs the students have turned into real Action Photographers! Our photo club this week was all about action and capturing movement. Our students learned how to photograph fast moments such as running and jumping, throwing and catching a ball, cartwheels and catching their shadows. With our Nikon Coolpix W100
Half Term Photo Fun
Holiday photography courses We had rainy, wet, windy but very fun and informative few courses this half term in London, Surrey, Kent and Cheshire. In a previous blog post we already wrote about the London Landscapes course, so you can read all about that here. We were all over the place this holidays. After London we
Photographing London Landscapes
Half Term fun in London Some kids and teens have started their half term with a photography course in London. Archbishops Park is a wonderful spot to learn about camera settings and compositions. The children aged 7 – 11 were trying out the close up and landscape settings to either take close up photos with
Valentine’s day inspired photographs
I love … The children in the after school clubs this week captured some Valentine’s day inspired photographs. We talked about the things we love. What we love to do, what we love about ourselves, the things that make us happy and bring us joy. The children were encouraged to make a list before capturing
How to photograph winter in the UK?
Is it even winter, if there is no snow? These are two of the questions we were trying to answer at this week’s after school photo clubs – as photographing winter was the club’s theme. We were talking about how to photograph these grey winter days when the nature is so different from summer or
Patterns in everyday life
What surrounds us We can find patterns in every day life, if we only look close enough. This week at the after school photography clubs the children did just that. They looked closely to find patterns in the classroom, the school and in the nature. To inspire them, we showed them some photographs by famous
Photographing with Flash
Photographing with flash in winter time This week at our after school photography clubs we were learning about photographing with flash in winter time. In the winter time when the sun goes down so quickly and the days are gloomy we have plenty of opportunities to use the flash. To inspire the children we showed
Winter scenes from Richmond Park
Capturing winter scenes Photographing winter in the UK can be quite a challenge. Not enough snow and frost, a lot of dreary days with rain and clouds can look boring, but a lovely setting can make up for that and the teens on the January Photography workshop in Richmond Park were able to take some
Creative Collage in the style of Sarah Anne Johnson
This term we tried a new theme ‘Creative Collage’ at after school photography club. We were inspired by the amazing creative collage work of Sarah Anne Johnson who created amazing collages using photographs and other mixed media to change or add to a scene. We showed the children the photographs
Creating a Mirror Image
Creating a mirror image is such a fun photography theme to try. We love teaching it at after school photography club as it gives the kids a chance to see the world in a different way and get creative! To inspire the children, we showed them photographs by famous photographers Danny Lyon, Gueorgui Pinkhassov & Nikos Economopoulos.
Christmas Photography Gift Guide
Christmas Photography Gift Guide for Kids & Teens ? Are you stuck on what to buy for the young photographer in your life this Christmas? We have put together a fun and inspiring Christmas photography gift guide to help you find the perfect present. From cameras to keyring’s and everything in between, you’ll be sure to
Autumn Photography Fun!
Autumn photography fun at after school club! This week at after school club the kids were having lots of Autumn photography fun! Autumn is a wonderful season for photography, the colours are vivid and the light is soft. To inspire our students photographs we showed them images taken by famous photographers. This week these images
Duke of Edinburgh Award Skills
Duke of Edinburgh Award Skills Choices ______________________________ Since 1956, The Duke of Edinburgh Award Skills has been a benchmark in the development of skills for young people. The awards currently encompass 144 nations and 287,937 young people – numbers which are growing each year. The Duke began to formulate the awards in 1954 at the
Black and White Photographs
At our after school photography club this week, the children have been taking Black and White photographs. The theme this week was all about black and white photographs. Students were taught where to find the black and white setting on their camera and how to use it effectively. Black and white photographs introduce more emotion
Freezing movement at photography club!
This week at our after school photography clubs our students have been freezing movement! Freezing movement is a fun photography skill to learn. At our after school photography clubs in Surrey we use Nikon Coolpix W100 cameras. These cameras have a setting called ‘Take a series of pictures’. (However, if you don’t have this camera
Colour photography for kids
Colour photography for kids at after school photography club! Colour photography for kids at this weeks after school photography club has been great fun! Our students love using the ‘more vivid’ setting on their camera to make the colours POP even more. This theme is all about focusing on taking simple pictures that portray the colour