Going on a spooky nature photography scavenger hunt is great fun for young people of all ages and all you need is a camera or smart phone. I did this activity with my 13 and 9 year old children and we all really enjoyed it. My 9 year old had lots of fun searching for spooky things in nature to take pictures of and my 13 year old was really interested in the technical side of photography - looking at the composition of the photos and experimenting with post processing and editing.

What you will need:

A camera or smart phone
An editing app (optional)

What you need to do:

Before you head out on your spooky nature photography hunt, chat with your children about what kind of spooky things they might be able to find in nature and what they think a spooky nature photo might look like and this can provide a starting point when looking for things to photograph. These are some of the the things my children suggested:

Dark
Spiky
Jagged edges
Rotting/decomposing
Spiders
Spiderwebs
Twisted
Shadows
Ghosts and monsters!

Now you can grab your camera or smart phone and start taking photos! Your camera doesn’t need to be fancy, a point and shoot camera is fine, though I find it easier to use an old smart phone or offer my own phone (just make sure that you have a good protective case and screen protector in case it is dropped!). Some of the advantages of using a smart phone are:

You’re more than likely to have a smart phone than a standalone camera with you when out and about and the best camera is definitely the one you have on you!
It’s easier to get straight into editing the photos without needing transfer the images to a computer
There are so many great photo editing apps available for smart phones. We have used Snapseed and Lightroom but there are so many to choose from!
Even if you have a budding photographer who wants to do more than point and shoot, a smart phone is still a great option as you can use a third-party camera app rather than using your phone’s native camera app which can offer manual settings giving you more control over the image taken.

Time to take your camera out for a walk! We chose to go to a local churchyard to look for spooky things to take photos of but we actually took more photos along the way there. We found dark red ivy, a spider, rotting berries, dangling dead leaves - all just on the street we live on!

This is a great activity for practising using the camera zoom and exploring macro photography and also for searching for nature in nooks and crannies!

Keep a look out for spooky monster faces too! You might find them on tree trunks, leaves or rocks.

Have a play with the settings on your phone or camera and see how it affects your image. The first photo below of the leaves was taken in standard macro mode and the second, black and white image was taken in stage light mono portrait mode on an iPhone. It really makes the leaves look spooky!

It’s also really fun to find shapes that you can edit later and add spooky faces! For very young children, it might be nice to print out some of these photos so they can draw on them and turn them into spooky creatures.